MUSKEGON – The Muskegon Risers came into Saturday’s home game against the undefeated Cleveland Crunch feeling good about their recent progress.

Two weeks ago they only lost by two goals in a road game in Cleveland, and they felt like they might be ready to compete with the defending league champions.

But now the Risers have some reassessing and work to do, following their humbling 16-4 loss to Cleveland in front of a big crowd at Mercy Health Arena.

The Risers are now 5-6 and remain in second place in the Major Arena Soccer League 2 Great Lakes Division standings. Cleveland, the first-place team, improved to 10-0.

The ugly loss doesn’t mean that the season is over for Muskegon, by any means.

They have one game left in the regular season, next week in Cincinnati, and in all likelihood they will quality for the MASL 2 playoffs.

But they have to figure out how to match up better with outstanding teams like Cleveland, on a consistent basis, or the playoffs could be a one-game-and-done experience.

They also need to cross their fingers a bit, because star forward Miguel Flores, the league’s leading point producer, went down in the third quarter of the game holding his knee.

After the game Flores sat in the tunnel by the locker rooms in the arena with his knee wrapped, and said he would likely get x-rays on Monday to determine the extent of the injury.

The Risers can’t control the injury situation, but they can work on playing better than they did on Saturday, according to Risers Coach Ritsema.

“We have to be more ready to play,” said Risers Coach Ben Ritsema, whose team is now 0-4 against Cleveland this season. “Mentally we made a lot of errors, and they were faster than us and smarter than us. They are very aggressive, and they were putting it in on just about every shot.

“It was not our best game at all. We have to go back and watch film, see where we made our mistakes and turn it around. We have a game in Cincinnati next week which now is huge (in terms of making the playoffs), and we definitely have to fix some things.”

The game started out very badly for the Risers and never got better.

Cleveland scored on six of its first seven shots in the first quarter and led 6-1 heading into the second.

Kevin Blackwood scored twice in the quarter for the Crunch while Aidan Bozak, Admir Suljevic, David Jordan and Hunter Johnson each scored once.

The visitors added three goals in the second quarter, with two from Jordan and one from Soljevik, and led 9-2 at halftime.

TJ Ifaturoti scored both of the first-half goals for the Risers.

Cleveland added on three more goals in the third quarter, with tallies from Suljevic, Gabe Pewa and Ryan Minick, while Jacob Potts found the net for Muskegon.

The Crunch piled it on in the fourth quarter, scoring four more goals to complete the assault. Minick, Benny Hrysakam, Kokai Minami and Johnson got the tallies.

Aldony Mendez scored in the fourth for the Risers.

“It was disappointing the way we played,” Ritsema said. “Maybe Cleveland was more excited to play in front of this big crowd than we were, for some reason. We’ve got to get our minds right and turn things around.”