SHEPHERDSTOWN, WV – Needing a win to punch its ticket back to the PSAC Tournament, the West Chester men's soccer team (10-5-2, 7-3-2) took to the road on Saturday afternoon to face Shepherd (1-11-6, 0-9-3). West Chester accomplished its mission, defeating the host Rams by a 4-1 final to ensure itself a spot in the PSAC Tournament when it begins next week.
With this afternoon's victory, coupled with an East Stroudsburg win over Shippensburg earlier this evening, West Chester will enter the PSAC Tournament as the No. 3 seed due to the head-to-head tiebreak between the Golden Rams and Warriors and will visit the second-seeded Warriors on Tuesday at 6 p.m.
The Golden Rams started the attack early on in the match, when
Andrew Markopoulos (Drexel Hill, Pa./Msr. Bonner & Prendergast) finished off an assist from
Shane Hartey (Runnemede, NJ/Triton Hall) to put West Chester in the lead 1-0 in the third minute.
Subbing into the game in the 29th minute,
Phil Udo-Inyang (Havertown, Pa./Haverford) took the field in dominating fashion and scored West Chester's second goal of the day less than two minutes later, to double the Golden Rams' lead 2-0.
After Tyler Hollis took a corner kick for Shepherd that resulted in a foul,
AJ Peev (Chalfont, Pa./Central Bucks South) answered back by scoring West Chester's third goal of match in the 42nd minute to lift the Golden Rams 3-0.
Heading into the halftime break, the Golden Rams outshot Shepherd 8-2 and led 4-1 in corners. West Chester goalie,
Daniel Good (Exton, Pa./Downingtown East), and Shepherd goalie, Billy Wood, each made a save for their teams in the first half of action.
Craig Potts (Stewartstown, Pa./Kennard-Dale) scored in the 53rd minute after taking a pass from
Brandon Duke (Royersford, Pa./Spring-Ford) to extend West Chester's lead 4-0, entering the late stages of the contest.
Shepherd's Shamar Robinson scored on a penalty kick in the 68th minute to put the Rams on the board, and avoid the senior day shutout but this was as close as they would get as WCU rolled to the 4-1 road victory.
At the end of the match, West Chester led in shots 11-9, as well as corners, 6-3. In goal, Good made four saves for the Golden Rams, while Wood made two saves of his own for Shepherd to slow the potent WCU offense.
UP NEXT:
The Golden Rams will now shift their attention to a rematch with East Stroudsburg on the road at ESU on Tuesday beginning at 6 p.m.
