It wasn’t planned that way, it just happened.
That’s exactly the phrase to describe the lone goal of the matchin San Diego State’s (6-11-1, 2-4-1 Mountain Pacific SportsFederation) 1-0 win over UC Irvine (12-7-1, 4-2-1 MPSF) Sunday at theSDSU Sports Deck.
In the eighth minute of play, senior Ralph Dartt took a throw-inon the Aztecs’ offensive third of the field. When he threw it intoward the UCI goal, it wasn’t a SDSU player who received it, but anAnteaters defender, who accidentally knocked the ball into his ownnet.
As for the rest of the half, it didn’t see much action, as bothteams combined for only three shots. It consisted of essentially bothteams knocking the ball around and changing possession.
However, the second half was no bore.
The Aztecs had 45 minutes to protect a lead. And that’s exactlywhat they did — protect.
They played mostly defense as the offense struggled to getanything going. The Anteaters were truly the aggressor as they wereable to play several crosses in front of the SDSU net and take nineshots to the Aztecs’ four.
SDSU defenders were getting burned
around the right side on numerous occasions, enabling UCI to playthose crosses and keep them on their toes. However, every time a ballwas played in front of its net, the Aztecs defense had an answer. Itwould either clear the ball, or SDSU goalkeeper Brian Barnes wouldmake one of his five saves.
Perhaps the biggest scare came in the 67th minute when Anteatersmidfielder Scott Bowman struck a ball 20 yards away from the Aztecs’goal. Barnes was caught going the wrong way, but true freshman MikeKlotovich was standing on his own goal line to prevent the shot fromgoing in.
Again in the 83rd minute, a UCI midfielder took a shot from thetop of the penalty box (18 yards away) sending it seemingly to thetop-right corner of the goal. But Barnes was there to leap and fullyextend his arms to deny the shot.
From there, the SDSU defense avoided a few more scares and escapedwith the victory.
“The defense had a tremendous game,” Barnes said. “(They wentthrough) a lot of pressure, but they stayed composed. They bailed usout and we couldn’t have done it without them.
“If everyone does their job, we can win, and that’s something wehaven’t been doing much of.”
Despite the Aztecs not having much to play for, senior MiltonEconomy said the win was productive.
“We played with a lot of pride,” Economy said. “If we can finishwith two good wins, this one, and against cross-town rival USD(Tuesday), it will give us confidence going into next season.”
But Economy won’t be around next year to see that play out becausehe and four other seniors played there last home game as Aztecs.Before the game, Ralph Dartt, Tim Lebold, E.T. Perry, Brett Lasby andEconomy were all honored.
SDSU will play its final match of the season at 7 tonight at USD,a top-25 team. The Toreros are 13-1-2 overall and sit alone atop theWest Coast Conference with a 4-0-1 record.
