Sierra’s youth-laden soccer team is showing signs of improvement under head coach Jose Montes’ preferred style of play, but the Timberwolves are still having trouble keeping shots between the posts.

The Timberwolves outshot and outplayed visiting West Tuesday in a 3-2 loss.

Joel Boling accounted for both Sierra goals, with assists coming from David Reyes and Guillermo Ortiz.

“We had opportunities, it’s not like we don’t have them,” Montes said. “If we can make at least 30 percent of our shots we’d be deadly. We outshot West 20-11, but we need to do better than come out with two goals.”

Four of those shots were missed one-on-one breakaways. Defensively, Sierra did a poor job of marking a player that had two goals and an assist.

“We need to work on picking up the playmakers,” Montes said. “That’s what we’re struggling with right now in the back. We’re giving those guys too much room to do what they want.”

Sierra (4-5) will look to bounce back at Escalon Thursday.

In Merced, East Union goalkeeper Joe Modesto kept the Lancers in the game with six saves in the first half.

But the Lancers (3-3-1) couldn’t get in sync offensively, adding pressure on the defense.

“For some reason we couldn’t get it going today,” East Union coach Clarence Goes said. “We had maybe six shots on goal the whole game and didn’t have any good opportunities. We were just not connecting (passes) too well.”

At Lincoln Park, the Buffaloes (2-6) outshot Escalon 20-10 and dominated possession but couldn’t sneak in a goal.

Florian Lambert had four saves at goal, and Vince Herrera played well at sweeper.

“We had like 10 nice crosses but we couldn’t get one in,” Manteca coach Justin Coenenberg said. “We outplayed them. Afterwards, (Escalon’s) coach came over and said, ‘We got lucky.’”

At Edison, the Cougars (2-3-1) were missing five starters — four of them injured, and another serving a red-card suspension.

“It was one of those bad days,” Weston Ranch coach Carlos Gaspar said. “The subs got some time, we just have to get healthy.”