Men's Soccer Falls to USJ 1-0
Dean College fell 1-0 to the University of Saint Joseph in GNAC play at Longley Field on Wednesday, but Noah Amaral put on a show in goal with nine saves.
The Blue Jays came out firing, and Amaral met them every time. He denied Mario Milardo in the fifth minute and Chris Adadjo in the ninth and tenth, then stopped Nate Gabriel and Nico Hamzavi back-to-back in the thirty-first and thirty-second minutes. Elis Sulollari rattled the crossbar in the thirty-ninth minute, and the game stayed scoreless at the break. Dean had its looks too, with Maxi Del Castillo sending a shot wide in the nineteenth minute and Victor Nunez Saravia putting one just over in the twenty-seventh.
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Saint Joseph opened the second half with shots on net, and Amaral made three saves in the first 40 seconds, stopping two attempts from Adadjo and a Sulollari header. Dean answered in the fiftieth minute when Ciaran Phibbs got his head on a Del Castillo corner, but Andres Diosa made the save. Then in the fifty-fourth minute, Milardo broke through for the only goal of the game. Two seconds later, Amaral stopped him again to keep the Bulldogs in it.
Dean kept pushing. Phibbs went to the air again in the sixty-third minute, and Hamzavi hit the crossbar for the Blue Jays in the seventy-fifth. The game got physical down the stretch, with Cairo Gordon-Somers-Archer, Ilyass Chahid, and Ethan Zigler each picking up a yellow card. Saint Joseph finished with 24 shots to Dean’s six, but Amaral kept the Bulldogs within one the whole way.
Amaral was the story, and Phibbs, Zigler and Will Chase played all 90 minutes on the back line. Austin Clark did the same in the midfield.
John Pordage, who started with the number nine on his back and played the number six role, saw some good and some room to grow. He said, “Defensively we worked well closing off lines. We’ve been working on our shape all week so that was good, has been good, however attacking wise we need to get up the field and create more chances to win games."
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