PENSACOLA, Fla. – The Spring Hill College (SHC) men's soccer team finished out the 2019 season with a 3-1 loss to the University of West Florida (UWF) Argonauts on Tuesday night in the quarterfinals of the 2019 Gulf South Conference (GSC) Championship Tournament at the UWF Soccer Complex.
The 16
th-ranked and 3
rd-seeded Agros (12-1-3) used a goal by Sean Hoffstatter off an assist by Lucas Barankiewicz in the 15
th minute followed by a successful penalty kick from Ed Chappe in the 41
st minute to take a 2-0 lead.
Spring Hill made things even more difficult for themselves just 20 seconds later as defender
Nicolas Wandl was shown a red card and SHC was forced to play a man down for the final 50 minutes of play.
Badger senior forward
Alex Lipinski of Krefeld, Germany, sliced the deficit in half with an unassisted goal in the 62
nd minute by cleaning up his own rebounded shot, but UWF would salt away the final score in the 73
rd minute as Eduardo Queiroz accepted a pass from Chappe to make it a 3-1 game.
SHC senior keeper
Barou Ndaw (1-2) from Mobile, Ala., made 2 saves against 14 shots and 4 corner kicks by the Argonauts while his compatriot across the field Jihad Gomes (12-0-3) of UWF made 5 saves versus 14 shots and 5 corner attempts by the Badgers.
"The boys fought valiantly and played very well especially with 10 men," said SHC head coach
Steve Wieczorek following the contest. "But once again our opponent capitalized in certain moments of the game to get the win despite our good play."
The 6
th-seeded Badgers finished the season 7-8 overall with a 5-5 record in GSC play, but turned around a disastrous 2-6 first half of the year into a 5-1 second half to qualify for their first back-to-back conference playoff appearances in the 28-year history of the program.
