Lawrence High's Ebrahim Diagne chases down a ball with Shawnee Mission Northwest's Wyatt Gunter during the first half on Tuesday, Oct. 27, 2015.

Overland Park ? A few games into the season, Lawrence High’s boys soccer team switched to a three-man defense to create more offense.

The Lions improved offensively, but knew they were putting pressure on their defenders. That pressure was too much on Tuesday when the Lions suffered a 4-0 regional loss to Shawnee Mission Northwest at the Shawnee Mission District Athletic Complex.

The Sunflower League’s leading scorer, SM Northwest senior forward Nate Jones, gave the Cougars a 1-0 lead in the 12th minute on a weird bounce off of the turf that went the opposite way that LHS goalkeeper Jeremiah Barbe was expecting.

The fifth-seeded Cougars (12-3-2) added two goals in the first five minutes of the second half, scoring on counter-attacks when the Lions pressed up the field for scoring chances.

“We thought the first goal was pretty lucky for them,” LHS senior defender Sam Dykes said. “But they kept pushing and pushing. They got what they earned.”

Despite the four goals, the three-back defense of Dykes, junior DJ Davis and senior Adam Weir turned away plenty of other strong SM Northwest attacks. The Cougars outshot LHS, 24-12.

“They’ve got some very good forwards and they played just through balls over the top and tried to use their athleticism against us,” Weir said. “It was the rainy turf that they had a lot of deflections that bounced around our keeper.”

SM Northwest sophomore Jack Lammers scored the second goal, taking one dribble on the right side of the box and finding space for an open shot. Three minutes later, Jones dribbled down the middle of the field and slipped a shot into the net.

The Cougars added their final goal in the 73rd minute when Lammers caught the Lions out of position.

“Going into that game, we’re thinking we need to shut down (Jones),” LHS senior midfielder Brennan Davies said. “Just amazing player. It shows if our whole mentality on defense is to shut that one guy down and he still scores two goals, I mean, that’s so hard to stop. And I think we did very well except for a couple of lapses.”

In the fourth minute, LHS senior midfielder Piper Hubbell exited the match because of a back injury and did not return. Without Hubbell, the Lions rotated senior Hunter Jewell and juniors Spencer Monninger and Charlie Carr at the center midfielder position.

“That’s tough, you lose your all-league player in the first five minutes, what are you going to do?” LHS coach Mike Murphy said. “This is playoffs, you need your best players out there. That really hurt us. How unlucky can you get?”

The Lions had a few solid opportunities in the first half. Junior forward Ebrahim Diagne fired a shot from the top of the box over the net in the 36th minute.

In the final minute of the first half, LHS junior forward Cain Scott snuck a pass to sophomore Quentin Harrington with space on the left side of the attacking third, but Harrington’s shot went straight to SM Northwest’s goalkeeper.

“We were already tired, then when we were trying to push forward, we were just out of gas,” Davies said.

The Lions ended the season with a 4-12-1 record.

“It’s tough,” Weir said, “because we’ve got so much better over the last part of the season and we thought we would make a run in these playoffs.”