There is a reason for playing the regular season, right? Try toexplain that to the players of this weekend’s Mountain Pacific SportsFederation Championship Tournament.

The regular-season records were used to determine the seeding ofall eight teams and decided which teams would face each other in thefirst round of the conference tournament. Every single team thatended up winning in the first round pulled off an upset.

San Diego State men’s soccer team was ranked fourth and fell toNo. 5 UNLV. No. 8 New Mexico beat top-seeded CSU Sacramento. The hostteam, No. 7 Fresno State, defeated No. 2 Air Force. No. 6 San JoseState topped No. 3 Denver.

Thetwo teams in the finals Sunday were the two teams that began thetournament lowest in the rankings, Fresno State and New Mexico. Maybesomeone accidentally flipped the rankings upside down.

As for SDSU, its match started off promising when it took an early3-0 lead. Sophomore Kevin Sapanli notched the first two goals for theAztecs, the first coming when he headed in a pass from freshman EricWohl. His second was the result of a penalty kick giving him eightgoals on the year.

Junior Adam Kulpa added an unassisted goal to close out the firsthalf. It looked as if nothing could stop SDSU.

But the Rebels had other plans and would not go down without afight. They battled back to tie the score at three goals apiece withless than five minutes to play and forced the game into overtime.After two fifteen-minute overtimes, the match remained tied.

The Aztecs and UNLV were forced to settle the game with ashoot-out. The Rebels found the net on their first three attemptsbefore SDSU got their first goal. Junior Tyler Tinling, who took fourshots during the match, found the back of the net and got the Aztecson the board.

After that, though, UNLV made it four in a row when Kevin Lunkwitznotched the game-winning goal and mathematically eliminated SDSU.

“We just lost our cool,” Sapanli said. “We weren’t trusting ourability. Instead of confidence, we went out for the second half justtrying to hold them off.”

The Rebels out-shot the Aztecs 24-14, but senior goalkeeper TimEdwards kept the match tied and recorded seven saves. He played ingoal for SDSU the entire match, including the shoot-out period.

The Aztecs will close out their season against USD Sunday at 2p.m. at the SDSU Sports Deck. USD is currently ranked No. 16 in theSoccer Times poll.