MOBILE, Ala. (October 3, 2021) – The Spring Hill College (SHC) men's soccer team battled to the final whistle on Sunday evening, but came up just a bit shy in a 2-1 Gulf South Conference (GSC) loss to the Union University Bulldogs at Library Field.
SHC controlled the flow of play throughout the first period of play, but just could not find the back of the net as the teams went to intermission in a scoreless tie. The Badgers had out-shot the Bulldogs 9-1 and taken five corner kicks to none for Union, but could not unlock the scoring safe.
The second half saw the Bulldogs (6-2-2; 3-2-1 GSC) come out of the break with a renewed sense of urgency that helped them break the tape with a goal in the 48
th minute off the foot of William Valencia with an assist from Stan De Vries.
Union tacked on an insurance goal in the 60
th minute when Manayeh Linton cleaned up a saved shot from Valencia following an entry from Gavin Scott.
The Bulldogs would need that insurance as the Badgers picked up the pace over the final 30 minutes. SHC rediscovered its offensive shape of the first half and used it to halve their deficit to 2-1 when
Brogan Horniman scored with an assist from
Joao Amaral in the 84
th minute.
The final six minutes would be a frantic back-and-forth across the breadth of the pitch with both teams turning up the aggression of their attacking offenses. SHC would twice see opportunities to send the game into overtime, but a diving save by the Union keeper to his right and a shot high over the bar would be the only results.
Badger keeper
Alessandro Erdelyi (5-4) made three saves versus seven shots and eight corner kicks by the Bulldogs while Botond Nemeth (6-2-2) of Union made nine saves versus 18 shots and 10 corner kicks from SHC.
SHC head coach
Chris Leonardi was unsatisfied at the result and after the game stressed that mistakes at this level are costly. "This is a tough one for the guys," he said. "Because I thought we created some good chances in the first half and could have been up. In the second half, we got punished with a mistake playing out of the back and we trailed from there."
Looking ahead, Leonardi wants to put the past 72 hours behind his team and keep pushing forward. "At the end, it's a bad weekend for us point-wise even though we didn't play poorly in either game," he said. "We will be back training on Tuesday and we will turn the page to Montevallo. There are still a lot of points to pick up in the league."
The Badgers (5-4; 1-3 GSC) will visit the University of Montevallo (UM) Falcons (7-1-1; 3-1-1 GSC) at the UM Varsity Soccer Field on Friday at 7:30 p.m.
