Santa Clara spoils senior day
Broncos score three, cruise past Toreros in men’s soccer finale
Eric Boose / Sports Editor / The USD Vista
On the day when USD celebrated their seniors, it was Santa Clara’s seniors who celebrated. Veteran Bronco forward Oladayo Thomas scored a pair of goals and fellow senior Juan O’Neill added a third to earn the visitors a 3-0 victory and fourth place in the West Coast Conference in Sunday’s season finale. The loss dropped the Toreros to fifth, and was USD’s worst result in WCC play.
The Toreros’ captain, senior midfielder Ross Meldrum, summed up the game.
“I think we started well, we started probably the better team,” Meldrum said. “Their first goal was probably against the run of play but that set us back a little bit, and then giving away another goal so early in the second half, that was tough. From there we struggled to really get back in the game. We had a few chances and we had good possession in the second half but we never really looked like getting back in it, unfortunately. They finished off with a good third goal. Tough afternoon, really.”
Before kickoff, the day started well for San Diego, as the team honored seven seniors, including Meldrum and 2018 WCC all-freshman team goalkeeper Matt Wiher. After the kickoff, the Toreros controlled the game in the early stages, but while they spent plenty of time with the ball at their feet in the first 10 minutes, they could not generate good chances to score.
After the game, Head Coach Brian Quinn identified what was missing for his team’s attack.
“Our final pass was lacking,” Quinn said. “I felt that we were getting the ball in the right areas, but the final pass, in regard to opening them up and creating that bona fide chance wasn’t there.”
With their defense holding off San Diego’s attacks, Santa Clara made their way back into the game. Thomas, the Broncos’ top scorer, showcased his attacking threat in the 16th minute, wriggling through the Toreros’ back line, but his shot was easy for Wiher to handle in goal. Ten minutes later, Thomas found the back of the net. USD’s junior defender Till Stockman misread a pass, allowing Santa Clara to put a cross into the box from a dangerous position. While senior Paul Ramlow headed the cross away, San Diego could not get the ball out of their end of the field, and it fell to Thomas. He danced past a couple defenders before gently lofting the ball over Wiher’s outstretched leg, peeling away to celebrate as it rolled into the back of the net.
Up 1-0 and with around 15 minutes before halftime, Santa Clara could have scored more. With less than five minutes until the break, the Broncos blew a pair of chances. First, junior midfielder Nicholas Cudini got the ball with only Wiher between him and the goal, but USD’s keeper stood his ground, snuffing out the chance. Moments later, first-year Timmy Rast showed why he is listed as a defender, putting a shot well wide of Wiher in a one-on-one situation.
But while Santa Clara was missing their chances in the first half, San Diego was barely creating any of their own. The Toreros registered only one shot on target in the first 45 minutes, a tame header that was never going to trouble the Broncos’ keeper. Even so, as Meldrum emphasized after the game, USD was down but not out at halftime.
“We’ve been behind a few times this season, and we’ve come back and pulled a win out, so I think, from my point of view, we have to remind the guys of that and take confidence that we’ve been in this situation before and we’ve had a good record with this, even last season, going a goal down and coming back and getting a win,” Meldrum said.
Coming into Sunday’s game, San Diego had come back from being a goal down four times in the season. Two goals down? Never. That became relevant as not even a minute into the second half, Thomas scored again. The Broncos’ danger man received a pass on the left wing, out-ran the Torero defense, and cooly slid the ball past Wiher for his fourth goal in the last three games.
Still, there was basically the entire second half to play, and USD was not going down without a fight.
“I don’t think the mindset necessarily changed,” Meldrum said. “I mean, we still had a lot of (soccer) left to be played when they scored the second goal so early on in the second half, but it obviously does make things a lot tougher … But I don’t think anything changes in how you look at the game, there’s a lot of time to be played, you just have to be thinking about how we can get back in the game. You get one and then take it from there.”
After Thomas scored, the Toreros picked up the pace and started to control the game again, but still struggled to create scoring chances. Their best opportunity came in the 56th minute. Sophomore Jake Schneider was scythed down by a tackle from a Bronco defender at the edge of the box. The referee allowed USD to play on, as the ball fell to first-year attacking midfielder Ross Johnstone, who let loose a line-drive shot which stung the palms of Bronco goalkeeper Andreu Cases Mundet. With the play over, the referee awarded a free kick for the challenge on Schneider. Junior defender Michael Barrow took the kick, but could not get it over the wall.
That turned out to be USD’s best chance at a comeback, as Santa Clara scored their third, game-clinching goal shortly after the hour mark. O’Neill got on the end of a cross and headed the ball past Wiher, into the far bottom corner.
With the game all but decided, the Toreros still produced a couple chances to score before the final whistle. With 15 minutes left, Meldrum lofted a cross into the middle of the penalty area which barely went over the heads of first year Nicklas Clausen and junior Taylor Perales. Inside the last five minutes, Clausen had two more chances to make something happen. First, he had a close-range shot blocked, but gathered the rebound, only to put it wide from a tough angle. Second, Clausen broke through the backline, but his pass to set up senior Amit Hefer was intercepted. The game finished without the hosts finding the back of the net.
The defeat was one of three losses San Diego suffered in its eight-game season, the others being a 1-0 defeat on the road against the 14th-ranked, undefeated LMU and a 4-1 season-opening loss at home to Cal Baptist. In somewhat perfect contrast, the Toreros also earned three wins, all against WCC opponents, and all by one-goal margins. They beat both Pacific and Gonzaga 2-1, but the pick of the bunch would be USD’s 3-2 overtime win against USF in San Francisco, when they came back from a goal deficit twice, scoring the equalizer with five minutes remaining in regulation. And San Diego’s two draws are not to be overlooked. The Toreros held No. 21 St. Mary’s scoreless through two overtimes in a 0-0 stalemate, and they came back from a goal down versus Portland to rescue the tie.
It was a season that Quinn called “a season to remember in many different ways,” but the coach expressed his thought that the Toreros could have picked up another win or two.
“There were good games, there were games where I felt we had done really well and deserved a win, and then there were other games where I felt that we were inconsistent,” Quinn said. “And the record probably shows that, where we were a .500 team. That’s something that you look at as a coach and say, if we had played better in two or three other games, we could have had a really, really successful season. But I always feel like the results and the standings reflect the type of season you had, your ups and your downs.”
Despite the season ending with a thud against the Broncos, Meldrum pointed out a silver lining, an undeniable benefit of playing soccer at USD.
“We lose 3-nil yesterday, but we’re winners at the end of the day,” Meldrum said. “We’re out in San Diego, at a brilliant university, playing (soccer) with our friends every day. The day before the game, all the seniors said a few words, and all the guys sort of echoed the same thing: enjoy the time, it’s a great program, we’re very lucky to be here.”