Kaneland soccer coach Scott Parillo gathered his team into his classroom a few days after the Knights lost to DeKalb in late September, eliminating the Knights from Northern Illinois Big 12 East title contention with four matches remaining.

The loss was Kaneland’s second in three matches, snapping a 10-match unbeaten run, and not much seemed to be going well on the field. Personnel wasn’t an issue, Parillo said, but in terms of fundamentals, his players simply weren’t in sync.

“In all of those games, we weren’t passing very well, we weren’t shooting very well, we weren’t communicating very well,” Parillo said. “We weren’t doing many things well. We kind of sat back, we talked, we said, ‘If we want to go far in the playoffs, we need to start doing those things that we were doing [early in the season.]’ ”