The opportunity for a top-two finish in the America East Conference turned to dust for the Binghamton University men’s soccer team as the Bearcats dropped a match to the University of Hartford, 2-1. The loss places the Bearcats at fifth in the conference and brings their road record to 1-4 for the season.
“I thought our guys played very well given the long drive we had [to Hartford],” said head coach Paul Marco. “We came out fighting in the beginning, but as the match went on we lost a little bit of the fight and bite that we had.”
The Hawks’ Carlos Villa scored the winning goal in the 78th minute. Villa shot his eighth goal of the season past Bearcat senior goalkeeper Jason Stenta off of Hawks’ James Stamopoulos’ pass. The Hawks are now second in the AE standings behind undefeated University of New Hampshire.
“It was a conference match,” said Marco, who correctly predicted the conference games to be full of surprises since the beginning of the season. “The teams are all very competitive and well-coached. Winning and losing can be determined by one kick at the right moment.”
Binghamton got off to a strong start as freshman Jake Keegan netted his fourth goal of the season 11 minutes into the match, belting the ball to the far right corner of the goal from 20 yards away.
“We got up quite well at the start of the match,” Marco said. “We throttled them for a good 10 minutes when we had the momentum up and running.”
The Hawks, however, got better of the Bearcats. In the 39th minute Hartford’s Ivan Guarin tied the match.
“After that goal we lost our momentum we had in the first half,” Marco said of Guarin’s goal. “We should’ve done a lot more. [Hartford] played hard.”
Hartford’s strength was evident throughout the match. The team outshot the Bearcats 18-6 and had five corner kicks versus Binghamton’s two. The Bearcats also had a higher number of fouls called in comparison to Hartford, 15-8. Marco believes, however, that the box score did not speak for the match.
“The statistics don’t tell the story,” he said. “[Hartford] was shooting the ball as far as 25 yards away from the goal and that went into the stats. A lot of times you have people with little knowledge of the game taking down the numbers and many times you can’t read into it because they really aren’t shots.”
Marco hopes that his squad will be able to keep its fuel in the games. He says that because it is a young team, a lot of the players still need to get used to keeping the intensity throughout the match.
“They need to get used to playing at a high level for a long period of time,” Marco said. “We have to keep the momentum high at all times, otherwise it’s at times like this when we fall back.”
The Bearcats are scheduled to take on host University of Vermont Saturday at 1 p.m.