The top-seeded Boston University men’s soccer team defeated the fourth-seeded University of Vermont, 2-1, last night at Nickerson Field to advance to the America East championship game.
Junior midfielder Richy Dorman scored the game-winner in the 81st minute after the Terriers (10-5-3) dominated the second half, but failed to convert on several chances.
Junior forward Shaun Taylor left the ball for a marked Dorman in the box. Dorman then spun off his defender and launched a shot past Catamount (9-4-7) goalkeeper Roger Scully for his third goal of the season.’
‘I don’t even know what I was doing there ‘-‘- I wasn’t supposed to be [there], really,’ Dorman said.
‘[The defender] was just really tight on me. I turned around and everyone was jumping on me. I really didn’t see [the ball] go past the goalkeeper,’ he added.
‘I was just saying, ‘Leave him. Let him run, let him run,” Taylor said.
Dorman’s late-game heroics had the team piling on top of him to the left of the goal after he scored. After creating numerous second-half chances, the Terriers breathed a huge sigh of relief when Dorman found the back of the net.
The Terriers’ tenacity led to them outshooting the Catamounts 14-3 in the final frame as opposed to the more even 5-4 margin in the first half. The back-and-forth play of the first frame had BU up, 1-0, heading into the locker room, but UVM had the better opportunities in the half.
Catamount senior forward Lee Stephane Kouadio threatened the Terrier defense throughout the first half. Kouadio’s first opportunity came in the 19th minute when he received a cross from inside the box and headed the ball just over the goal. Kouadio tried to strike again just two minutes later, blasting by two Terrier defenders to face goalkeeper Hrafn Davidsson one-on-one before Davidsson broke up the play.
‘He’s a good player,’ BU coach Neil Roberts said of Kouadio. ‘He had two [chances] in the first half when they got the ball to him. He’s a very talented guy that goes at you if you let him turn. Our defender’s job was not to let him turn because when he does, he’s dangerous.’
Although the majority of the first-half chances went to the Catamounts, the Terriers were able to convert on a well-executed play in the UVM zone. America East Rookie and Midfielder of the Year Michael Bustamante brought the ball through the midfield and sent it to the right side to senior Jon Jonsson. The Iceland native made a quick cross to a streaking Jin Oh, who put the ball past Scully to put the Terriers on the board in the 41st minute.
The Terriers then set the tone in the 47th minute with a golden opportunity when a wide open Ben Berube sent the ball sailing straight over the goal. But just a minute later, the Catamounts netted the equalizer as freshman Yannick Lewis’s shot beat Davidsson off a counterattack.
But BU was relentless after UVM knotted it up, creating numerous chances until Dorman finally capitalized on a Terrier opportunity.
‘It was a very hard-fought game and it had different flows to it,’ Roberts said. ‘We came out pretty well in the second half and then all of a sudden it’s 1-1. That was disappointing, but I think we composed ourselves and kept banging and banging and banging. We had some great chances, we created some stuff and we finally got the goal.’
The Terriers return to action Saturday against Binghamton University at 3 p.m. on Nickerson for the conference title.
This is an account occasionally used by the Daily Free Press editors to post archived posts from previous iterations of the site or otherwise for special circumstance publications. See authorship info on the byline at the top of the page.
