St. Aloysius controlled the flow of the game, threaded perfect crosses in front of the net and locked down Brookhaven on the defensive end Monday.

There was only one problem.

“We just couldn’t finish,” St. Al coach Suzie Channell said. “The ball was dropping all around the net and we couldn’t finish. They had, really, one shot and they made it.”

Indeed, the Lady Flashes couldn’t find the net despite putting 14 shots on goal. That allowed a single tally by Brookhaven’s Amy Hoover early in the first half to stand up, and the Lady Panthers escaped with a 1-0 victory.

Hoover’s goal was the only real mistake the Lady Flashes made in the game. The senior got the ball around the 30-yard line, curled toward the sideline and then back into the middle of the field and lofted a shot into the right corner of the net 12 minutes into the game.

“Whenever I see space I just attack. Sometimes they stop when I get the ball,” Hoover said. “I like to find a hole and go through it. On my first touch, they took away the inside. Then I dribbled through the middle and hit it with my left foot.”

Brookhaven (3-2) controlled most of the action before Hoover’s goal, but the momentum swung immediately after. St. Al (2-3) kept the ball on Brookhaven’s side of the field for most of the last 68 minutes of the game — it just didn’t have anything to show for it.

Early in the second half, Nicole Hayward got the ball twice in front of the net with plenty of time to shoot, but couldn’t get the ball settled on her foot. A few minutes later, she zipped a perfect cross past keeper Katie Cullpepper, but no one was in position to follow it up.

With under two minutes to play, Hayward sent another cross through the box that Sara Townsend was just one step behind. The ball passed harmlessly to the left side of the field.

At one point, St. Al had outshot Brookhaven 9-1 in the second half. The Lady Flashes finished with a 14-6 advantage in shots for the game.

Despite some obvious frustration, Channell wrote it off as a bad night.

“I think it was just one of those days,” she said. “We’d been playing so well that it was bound to happen.”

St. Al will return to action on Nov. 30 at Richland. A game scheduled for today at St. Andrew’s has been postponed until January 7.