Creighton University
Evansville
Men's Soccer Opens Valley Slate With Win Over Evansville
10/11/2008 9:30:00 PM | Men's Soccer
OMAHA, Neb. - Andrei Gotsmanov scored a pair of second-half goals, including the game-winner with 51 seconds left, to lead the third-ranked Creighton men's soccer team to a 3-2 win over Evansville on Saturday night at Morrison Stadium. The crowd of 3,192 on Radio Lobo Family Night was Creighton's largest crowd ever for a conference home match.
Creighton improved to 9-1-1 overall and 1-0-0 in Missouri Valley Conference play. Evansville is now 7-4-1 and 0-1-0 in league action.
Byron Dacy opened the night's scoring with a goal exactly 31 minutes into play. The Hermann Trophy candidate took a cross from Kris Clark and headed it past UE keeper Alec Duffy. Clark created the scoring chance with some nifty moves around the UE defense and chipped his crossing pass perfectly for Dacy to bury his second goal of the season.
The Jays led 1-0 at the half, out-shooting the high-powered UE offense 9-5.
In the second half, the Bluejays took a two-goal lead in the 58th minute. Dacy sent a pass into the box that Tucker Sindlinger touched and let go through to Gotsmamov for the his first goal of the match at 57:20.
However, the most dangerous lead in soccer would not hold up thanks to the heroics of UE's Tyler Crawford. Crawford scored in the 74th minute off Tom Irvin's league-leading eighth assist.
Crawford also scored with 9:08 to play to even the match at 2-2. Duffy launched a long goal kick that Irvin would head to Crawford. Crawford again found the back of the net for his fourth goal of the year and second of the night.
The Jays won the match in the final minute with the help of an Evansville defensive miscue. Reggie Edu's attempt to break up a play failed as the ball found its way between his legs and Sindlinger found himself out wide of the 18-yard box. Sindlinger sent a short pass to Gotsmanov, who gathered the ball and slid it past Dufty with 51 seconds remaining on the clock for this team-leading sixth goal of the season.
"You never want to give up goals, but I told the team not to dwell on those 10 minutes and think about their accomplishment," said Bluejay head coach Bob Warming after his team's shutout streak came to an end after not allowing a goal in better than 722 minutes of play. "I applaud our whole team on better than 12 hours of outstanding team defending. But we'll watch film on those and correct our mistakes.
"Evansville really showed tonight why the coaches picked them to finish so high in the conference," Warming continued. "They are a much improved team with some very dangerous strikers."
The Jays would out-shoot one of the top offenses in the league and NCAA, 19-9 in the match and had nine corner kicks to none by the Aces. The Bluejays tied their season-high with 10 shots on goal.
Brian Holt's shutout streak ended at 722:12, the longest goalkeeper streak in school history by 160 minutes.
Creighton plays its next two conference contests on the road, as the Bluejays travel to Bradley next Saturday for a 7 p.m. kickoff.
