With 18 minutes remaining in the America East quarterfinals, Stony Brook senior midfielder Alejandro Fritz booted a long cross from the right side of the field. The ball sailed untouched into the far end of the goal, giving the Seawolves a late 2-0 lead on Saturday night.
The Kenneth P. LaValle Stadium crowd erupted into cheers, as it seemed like the
insurance goal that the Stony Brook Men’s Soccer team had scored would be enough to send the Seawolves to the semifinals.
It was not meant to be.
Binghamton roared back with two late goals to force overtime. Then, with five minutes remaining in the second overtime period, graduate forward Pascal Trappe stepped into a loose ball near the penalty spot and buried a golden goal into the top-right corner of the net, ending Stony Brook’s season. The Bearcats won the match 3-2 and lived to play another day.
“It was a really tough result,” head coach Ryan Anatol said after the loss. “I didn’t really have anything to make them feel better about the result, but I was proud of the performance by our team tonight.”
Early on in the match, it seemed as if fate could have been in Stony Brook’s favor. In the ninth minute, Binghamton sophomore forward Ben Ovetsky capitalized on a miscue from Stony Brook freshman midfielder Martieon Watson and found himself in the open field, one-on-one with junior goalkeeper Jason Orban.
The Seawolves caught a break when Ovetsky missed the breakaway shot wide of the goal. 10 minutes later, Stony Brook made the visitors pay with an opportunity of its own on the other end of the field.
A loose volley bounced to Watson, who launched a 20-yard shot with his right foot into the back of the net past Binghamton junior Robert Moewes, the America East Goalkeeper of the Year, to give Stony Brook a 1-0 lead.
After Fritz gave the Seawolves a 2-0 lead off of an assist by Danny Espinoza, Stony Brook had all the momentum with just minutes separating the team from the conference’s final four.
Despite the two-goal advantage, Stony Brook continued to use an aggressive playstyle. Anatol cited a pair of early-season blown leads in which his team sagged on defense and it cost the team. These losses prompted Anatol to try a different late-game philosophy on Saturday.
“We tried to continue to do the things that we were doing,” Anatol said. “We talked about it throughout the season. We were trying to stay up the field, not getting too deep [in our own zone], continuing to attack.”
Binghamton responded to Stony Brook’s play with some counter-attacks. In the 77th minute, Bearcats junior forward Alex Varkatzas tried a shot from the left flank. Although the initial attempt was blocked, junior defender Zach Galluzzo slid into the rebound to trim the Seawolves’ lead to one.
“When they scored the first goal, I thought it was a soft one on our end,” Anatol said. “I thought we could have defended the restart a bit better. That goal made a game of it.”
After Binghamton got on the scoresheet, the game intensified. Within five minutes after the goal, a combined five fouls were committed, as the players looked to take control of the ball by any means at every chance.
With three minutes left in regulation, Binghamton equalized the match. After receiving an errant ball on a broken play, Varkatzas crossed the ball to freshman forward Nikos Psarras, who tapped in his first career goal to make the score 2-2.
Stony Brook nearly won the match with less than a minute remaining in regulation. With the ball in a skirmish in front of Moewes’ net, the goalkeeper stepped out and misplayed a ball.
Senior forward Martin Giordano turned and blasted the ball toward the vacated net, but the kick ricocheted off the
head of a Binghamton defender and flew over the goal.
“After two soft goals, to not point fingers, to not hang their heads, to not place blame, we created some really good chances,” Anatol said. “That ball that was saved off the line? That’s soccer. The kid who stopped that ball won the game for them tonight.”
After much back-and-forth action in the first overtime, the Bearcats delivered the heartbreak with five minutes to go in the second overtime. Trappe shot a ball that deflected off the left arm of Orban and went into the goal to punctuate the Binghamton comeback.
“It’s a fine line in soccer between winning and losing games,” Anatol said. “We were very close to achieving our goals, but ultimately the bounces didn’t go
in our favor.”
