Bobcats Fall in Championship Game

After defeating Juniata on Friday afternoon to start the season off right the FSU men's soccer team dropped a closely contested match to Manhattanville College 0-1 on Saturday in the tournament's championship game.

Friday's game started out a bit chaotic as the boy's seemed to be dealing with opening day butterflies. There was not much flow to the game and possession was at a minimum for both teams.  We went to half feeling like we were lucky to be even at 0-0.

In the second half the boys settled down and started to connect some passes and show some spark in the attacking third.  Juniata did't threaten much as we only allowed two shots in the second half, but all our possession went wasted as we failed to find a game winner in regulation.

Junor Hendrik de Wit

After a punt by Hassan Mostafa, Brian Whitmore and Hendrik de Wit applied good pressure to the ball to help us win it back in the attacking third.  Whitmore found Barak Shechter who fed de Wit with a nice through ball and Hendrik scored his first collegiate goal from about 30 yds out that sailed over the keeper and tucked just under the upper 90 for the game winner in double overtime.

http://youtu.be/R0YbTAgpoDA

Saturday afternoon we would face Manhattanville College in the championship game after they defeated Alfred University 1-0 in double overtime in the night cap on Friday night.

This game was similar to the first half on Friday as neither team really did a great job of keeping the ball and creating good scoring opportunities.  Most of the game was played out in the midfield with a lot of transitions being halted by the opposing back lines.

We probably only had two or three legitimate scoring chances and did not do enough throughout the match to keep the pressure on Manhattanville.  About midway through the second half we failed to clear a corner kick that bounced near post.  The loose ball fell to an open Manhattanville player about 3 yds from the goal and it was put away for the game winning goal.

We can see a lot of potential in what we are doing, but we still have a long way to go to get to the level that will be needed to compete for the CAC playoffs.

Still feeling the affects of pre-season, seven players did not suit up for the opening weekend tournament.  Hopefully by Wednesday we'll get two back as we go on the road to face Bethany College at 4pm.