By By Dave Diamond
Under the Friday night lights at Hofstra Soccer Stadium, the Pride cemented its most successful regular season since joining the Colonial Athletic Association (CAA) with a 2-0 victory over Northeastern University.
With the win, the Pride (12-4-3, 7-2-2 CAA) clinched a first-round bye in the conference tournament, finishing second behind Old Dominion.
“We’re not going to get too excited, we’re just going to focus in on what we have to do each game,” head coach Richard Nuttall said.
The team’s focus and concentration in the final games of the season catapulted the Pride to an unimaginable finish in the regular season. The 2-0 victory was the team’s fifth consecutive shutout and seventh in the last 10 games.
In that time, senior goaltender Matthias Gumbrecht, one of four seniors to be honored prior to opening kick-off for Senior Day, saw his goals against average fall to a miniscule 0.74 after Friday night’s action.
“We’ve been playing great soccer the last couple of weeks,” Gumbrecht said. “We were very successful, very determined and concentrated. We got the job done, so I’m very confident.”
Nothing spells confidence like an early lead, which is exactly what the Pride grabbed against the Huskies. Only 2:28 into the game, junior Constantinos Christoudias was taken down inside the box and the Pride was awarded a penalty kick. Junior forward Chris Cox blasted a shot past diving Huskies’ goaltender Sergio Saccoccio, who guessed wrong on Cox’s kick direction. It was Cox’s fifth goal of the season.
Later in the half, junior Brian Sosa and senior Michael Todd teamed up to give the Pride some insurance. Sosa made a tremendous move between two defenders at midfield, which opened up space to send a tip pass to Todd. The Pride’s leading scorer powered his way on a 30-yard run with three Huskies hounding him and fired a shot past a sprawling Saccoccio into the right side of the net, giving the Pride a 2-0 lead only 28:02 into the game.
“They just kept backing off, so I just kept taking the space since they were backing off,” Todd said of the Huskies’ defenders. “I took the shot early, because sometimes if you take it early the keeper is not set.”
The score held throughout the half and the rest of the game. However, the 2-0 lead in the first half was more poor luck for Northeastern than domination by the Pride. The half was evenly played, with the Pride leading in shots, 6-4. The Huskies’ shots were much less threatening.
“I didn’t think we played particularly well, but we got the result and that’s what counted,” Todd said.
The second half provided some tense moments, but solid defense and goaltending, the two best aspects of the Pride system of play, proved up to the challenge. Just over 12 minutes into the second half, Northeastern’s Tom Heimreid blasted a shot off a rebound after a corner kick, but the Pride’s Arnel Andrada was in perfect position to stop it from going into the net.
With 12:15 left, Gumbrecht made his best save when he denied Greg Kilkenny’s header after a nice cross from Jeff Gannon. Gumbrecht made one final sprawling save in the final seconds, solidifying the team’s longest shutout streak since seven consecutive in 1969.
Nuttall was worried about the Pride looking ahead to the tournament instead of getting things done, but was pleased with the result.
“We have a couple of injuries and a couple of guys on the danger-line, with another yellow card they would have been out of the semi-finals,” Nuttall said. “We had to balance the two.”