Things couldn’t have gone much worse for the Lake Travis boys’ soccer team at the Bastrop Invitational this weekend, and now the Cavaliers are looking for answers.

Lake Travis lost 6-0 to Bastrop, 5-0 to Westlake, 3-2 to Eastside Memorial and 3-1 to a Bastrop team that was made up of mostly junior varsity players.

“I don’t have an explanation for a lot of things, and for other things, I saw a lot of problems,” Lake Travis head coach Brett Schwab said. “We were missing shots from literally a foot away at points, kicking it right to the other team’s goalkeeper. I mean, we’ve got 22 feet to work with, and we were just making it hard on ourselves.”

The question now is whether the weekend was a fluke, or if there is real trouble on the horizon.

“I guess I’m concerned,” Schwab said. “We started with 21 players, we now have three ineligible, one had the flu this weekend and six were injured. I’m working with two subs and a lot of kids that haven’t started a varsity game.”

Those players found the going pretty tough at the varsity level, even after a junior varsity season last year in which they went 12-1.

“It’s obviously a different ballgame,” Schwab said. “You can’t get away with the same simple or straightforward moves at the varsity level, and we can’t keep this up or it’s going to be a very long season.”

Still, Schwab’s preseason hopes for playoff soccer haven’t been dashed.

“I’ll still be very disappointed if we don’t make the playoffs, especially with as many spots as are available,” he said. “But we’re making some really simple mistakes. We won 10-percent of 50-50 balls during the tournament. I don’t care who you play, if you give them 90-percent of the possession, you’re going to lose.”

When it comes down to it, Schwab said it’s all about desire and working for the ball, and that right now, his team just lacks the experience necessary to go after possession.

“There’s no skill in a lot of the things we’re doing wrong,” he said. “It’s just a matter of making something happen, and going after the ball. It’s not something you can teach, and not something I expected would be a problem.”

There were positives in the tournament, though, and plenty of good things to build off of and work on.

“Our midfield played really well, passing the ball well and finding our forwards in space,” Schwab said. “But we had a lot of trouble with transition. When our forwards would advance and then look for our midfielders, who should have been on the edge of the box, they were too far back. So we have to work on our defense moving up the field, so that the midfielders can be there for those kickbacks, and we need to make sure our wingers get back to help on defense.”

Defensive communication will be key for the Cavaliers as they move forward, and trying to make the unit more solid will be vital if Lake Travis is going to stay in close games during the district stretch.

“I’m hoping we can figure some of this out before the district schedule gets rolling, and we’ll definitely try,” Schwab said. “We’re just working with a lot of inexperience, and we need to get healthy to make it less of an issue.”

Up top, Schwab thinks his speedy forwards need to slow down a little.

“They’re fast, but they’re not so fast they’re just going to step right by defenders, and they’re still figuring that out,” he said.

Lake Travis takes on Fredericksburg Friday night at 5 p.m. as part of LTYA night.