Box Score HAYWARD – Crossbars, posts and goalkeepers. That's what the Jacks' shots seem to find; everything but the net. Same held for Friday's matchup against the Cal State East Bay Pioneers as Humboldt State suffered a 3-1 loss to the Pioneers.

The Lumberjacks drop to 1-9-2, 0-9-2 in California Collegiate Athletic Association, while Cal State East Bay improves to 5-7-1 overal, 4-6-1 in conference.

"It's the same kind of unlucky story like with every other game," said head coach C.J. Johnson. "I feel as if we can't buy multiple goals."

Within the first minute goalkeeper Amber Woolcock had to stop a Pioneer's shot on goal, but Eugenie Foote put Cal State East Bay on the board first in the 17th minute, after only being in the game for five minutes.

The Lumberjacks responded with two quality shots in the following five minutes, but found goalkeeper Nina Cefalo's hands on one and the post on the other.

Humboldt State started to attack more out of the back after a few tactical changes, but CSUEB caught HSU in a counter attack in the 29th minute to give the Pioneers a 2-0 lead. Claudia Luna's diagonal pass to the Jacks' exposed defensive hole found Ariana Nobrega to put Nobrega in a one-on-one match against Woolcock where she slipped it around the Jacks' goalkeeper into the net.

"Communication and awareness cost us that goal," said Johnson. "I think the disappointing part is that they had three opportunities on goal and they scored all three. Two of the three were breakdowns and the third was an unlucky deflection."

That third, unlucky goal came in the 67th minute when a ball took a deflection off a Lumberjack defender and landed at the feet of Shianna Falk where she was able to get a quality shot off, sending it past Woolcock to give the Pioneers a 3-0 cushion.

The Lumberjacks were determined to not walk away empty-handed and found a goal for themselves in the 73rd minute. Tamra James scored Humboldt State's lone goal off an assist from Chelsea LaRue.

"It was certainly a good battle, CSUEB fought well as a team," said Johnson. "We fought hard, but we didn't fight hard enough to win. It wasn't until the last 20 minutes when we were down 3-0 that we started fighting to win and by then it's too late."

Humboldt State heads to Cal State Monterey Bay for a Sunday kickoff time of 2 p.m. The Jacks hope to break their unlucky streak and find their first conference win. Not only will HSU have to compete against the Otters, the Jacks will have to battle nagging injuries, sickness and thick grass that will slow down HSU's speed of play.

"Monterey Bay is always a very difficult place to play at," said Johnson. " It's a very big, slow field with thick grass, which makes it hard to play on. We just have to see how our training session goes tomorrow so we can get used to the field."