After a string of spotless results, the Bradford boys soccer team has come back down to earth a bit.

Coming off of a three-game stretch against Oil City, Meadville, and Warren that saw the Owls win by a combined score of 26-0, Bradford has dropped its last two contests, including Tuesday’s 4-1 loss at home to Slippery Rock.

An uncharacteristically sluggish first half saw Bradford yield three goals to the Rockets, a deficit that proved to be much to overcome despite a much better performance in the second 40 minutes.

“We were sloppy in the first half,” Owls coach Wes Lohrman said. “They’re a great team but really we did a lot of the work for them. We allowed them to turn us over. They have a lot of speed on their team and they definitely utilized that in the first half, but we definitely helped them with our possession.”

It didn’t take long for Slippery Rock to find the back of the net. Less than four minutes into the game, the Rockets worked the ball up the right hand side when a low cross found James Gallagher in the Bradford box. Gallagher calmly put the ball away for an easy goal.

Slippery Rock seemed to be moving faster than the Owls in the early going, controlling the pace of the game and forcing a number of poor touches and passes.

The Owls were able to keep the deficit at 1-0 for most of the half, but the Rockets scored twice in the final ten minutes of first-half action, with both goals coming courtesy of Ryan Davie.

With just under 10 minutes left, Davie took advantage of a Bradford turnover at midfield, made a good move, and slotted in a great shot past Bradford keeper Evan Schmidt.

Just minutes later, a Slippery Rock goal kick that went over the heads of several players found its way to Davie, who put home another nice shot to make it 3-0 Rockets going into halftime.

Better touches, and better energy, from Slippery Rock throughout the half seemed to drain the Owls of a lot of their momentum.

“In conjunction with their speed, we just weren’t able to recover,” Lohrman said. “Going down 3-0 to a team like that, you try to tell your guys, ‘It’s 0-0, one at a time.’ But it’s a lot of work. I felt that we did come out better, but unfortunately we just ran out of energy. We had to chase too much of the game from that point.”

In the early minutes of the second half, Bradford seemed to have found some new confidence. The Owls played with more of a purpose both on offense and defense thanks to better work on contested plays.

“Once we were able to generate some of that possession from winning those 50-50 balls, that got us going forward and once we were able to go forward a little bit and play in their third of the field, we found a little bit more success,” Lohrman said.

With about eight minutes gone in the first half, Bradford’s Colton Swanson made a run into the Slippery Rock box and drew a foul that gave the Owls a penalty kick. Ian Grady calmly tucked the ball away in the bottom corner to put Bradford on the board.

The attacking mentality that led to the penalty was something Lohrman saw a lot more of in the second half.

“Moving Colton up top, he obviously is a workhorse on the field,” Lohrman said. “He exerts a lot of energy and he was able to get the ball, hold it up, make things happen and got them back defending.”

But the Owls weren’t able to close the gap any further, and with less than 10 minutes to go, Slippery Rock put the game away for good on a headed goal from Ian Balquist off of a nice throw in.

For Lohrman, snapping this losing streak will be about getting back to basics.

“It’s those little things, the fundamentals: our passing and our finishing need to be better,” he said. “This is our largest defeat this season, and again, (they’re a) great team, but I feel like if we can get all of our pieces working at the same time, we can compete with them as well.”

Schmidt finished with 13 saves in net for Bradford. Slippery Rock’s Duncan McCoy made nine saves at the other end.

Bradford’s JV squad lost 2-1. Jaydon Warnick scored the Owls’ only goal while Gavin Piscitelli made four saves.

Bradford (6-4) will be at home again on Thursday when the Owls host Franklin.