Medaille Men Heading to 6th NCAA Tournament After Dominant AMCC Title Game Performance
ERIE, PA - The Medaille College men's soccer team is headed to the NCAA Tournament for the 6th time in the past eight seasons as they outlasted top seeded Penn State-Behrend (1-0) in the AMCC title game.
The score was not indicative of the game as the Mavs dominated the Lions throughout, outshooting them (20-7) over ninety minutes of play. The Mavs nearly got on the board in the 27th minute when Austin Tom rocketed a shot off the near post that ricocheted to teammate Alex Pollak who blistered the rebound shot off the crossbar, but to no avail.
The Mavs carried the momentum into halftime as they seemingly had the Lions on their heels. Coming out of the locker room Penn State-Behrend was a bit more assertive but were unable to muster much offense as the minutes ticked by without either team putting together many dangerous chances.
The game changed suddenly when a Behrend attack was thwarted and the Mavs flipped the field quickly as their counter attack led to a nice lead pass being played from Greg Hoffman through a defender and onto the foot of George Tor who fired a nice shot to beat the Behrend goalkeeper at the (79:10) mark to give the Mavs the (1-0) lead.
The host team had a couple of desperation chances down the stretch, including a shot by Jake Gamble with (00:22) remaining that went wide right, ending the Lions chances of a repeat.
In the win, the Mavs posted their 13th shutout of the season and senior keeper Nick Kurtz stopped both shots that were on goal to contribute to that remarkable number. For Medaille, they improve to (17-2-0) on the season as they have now won seven straight games while surrendering just one goal and outscoring their opponents (21-1) over that time span.
The Mavs will learn their NCAA Tournament fate on Monday (11/5) when the NCAA releases their brackets at 1:00pm, that can be accessed live at www.ncaa.com.
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