Naperville North's Iverson rises to occasion

There may not be such a thing as an alley-oop in boys soccer, but the opportunity to deliver in such a spectacular way can occur if you've got the size and athleticism to bury a goal via a restart.

That's gone well for Class 3A defending champion Naperville North and it was the difference in its 1-0 win over Oswego on Tuesday in its opener in the Best of the West Tournament in Naperville.

Colin Iverson connected midway through the first half on a restart at the 20:42 mark with a header off a feed from Jack Barry to score the lone goal of the game.

"Me and Barry have had that connection for awhile now and I know where he's going to throw it and he knows where I'm going to be," Iverson said. "It's worked well for us so we're just going to keep going with it."

With Iverson at 6-foot-3, it would be foolish for the Huskies to not take advantage of his size. Teams have tried to stop it the past two seasons but haven't been able to do so.

"It's like with Randy Moss (in the NFL), how do you defend that size because it's so difficult," Huskies coach Jim Konrad said. "We know that there's a lot that we can do with restarts, but we also haven't spent a lot of time there yet. We'll spend more time there to get better on our timing so that we're better there when we need it most."

The Panthers probably think the Huskies look plenty good with their restart arsenal already.

Naperville North (4-0-1) needed that goal though as it struggled to create scoring chances during the normal run of play. A lot of that had to do with Oswego, which played tough and constantly denied the Huskies from penetrating and getting into attack mode.

"I thought they were organized and did a great job matching up against us athletically and making us grind," Konrad said. "Thank goodness for restarts because that bailed us out and (goalkeeper) Tommy Welch bailed us out a few times, but that's all part of it. Games like this don't always go your way and you have to grind them out. Fortunately we got this one."

The Huskies weren't looking to make excuses but were coming off a competitive and chaotic week in which they played four games.

"We're still not locked down with the final lineup yet and haven't found our groove," Konrad said. "Our back four and our midfield worked better, but it's still early and we're just five games in. Now we just need to focus on getting ready for Fremd on Friday and go from there."