After a 5-0 loss against No. 24 Bryant at home on senior day, the Binghamton men’s soccer team hit the road for its last regular season matchup of the season against UMBC, ultimately settling for a 2-2 draw. After both UMBC and BU scored in the first half of the contest, a late-game goal from the Retrievers would give them a lead, but Binghamton was able to find the equalizer as the contest ended in a tie. With Tuesday night’s draw, BU clinched the No. 6 seed in the America East (AE) tournament.

“The goal is to get to the playoffs, right, so we make playoffs, we’re in [the] postseason,” said Binghamton head coach Paul Marco. “I think that for us, is you know, something that we’ve been striving for. We’ll see how it goes on Saturday, just now, it’s you try to win and advance.”

UMBC (7-3-5, 3-1-3 AE) got a shot off early into the match, looking to get on the board first. Despite this attempt, it would be Binghamton (4-9-3, 2-2-3 AE) that scored the game’s first goal. In the fifth minute, redshirt senior midfielder Anthony Lazaridis broke away from the UMBC defense and found the back of the net to give Binghamton a 1-0 lead. A few minutes later, Lazaridis would again manage to get a shot off but couldn’t convert it into another goal for BU.

The Retrievers now looked to even the score and get a goal for themselves. UMBC outshot BU 14 to two throughout the half, but for most of the period, the home team was unable to get the score they were looking for. This all changed in the 43rd minute when UMBC capitalized on an opportunity to tie the game going into halftime with the ball making its way passed graduate student goalkeeper Dylan McDermott’s hands and into the back of the net. The Bearcats and Retrievers entered the half with the score knotted up at 1-1.

“Any other teams that we play in the conference, they’re all very good,” Marco said. “We have a wonderful conference this year. It’s one of the best conferences in the country so anybody that we play is going to be difficult.”

As the second half of play commenced, both sides looked to break the tie and take the lead. Both teams fought for the ball and looked to create opportunities. In the 52nd minute, The Retrievers got a shot off, that went out top. The Bearcats responded with a shot of their own three minutes later, but it went out top right. In the second half, Binghamton was able to spend more time on offense and created more opportunities than they had in the first. The Bearcats got off five shots throughout the entirety of the second half while holding the Retrievers to just six shots in the half.

The half went on with both teams exchanging the ball and looking for a goal. Neither team could find the back of the net until the final 10 minutes of the contest. In the 82nd minute, the Retrievers found the back of the net to take a 2-1 lead with only eight minutes left in the match. This didn’t deter the Bearcats, as they fought hard to find the equalizer. Two minutes after giving up a goal, BU had a throw-in that found multiple players before finding senior midfielder Markos Touroukis, who shot the ball and scored to tie the score at 2-2 with five minutes remaining.

“I thought we scored two good goals,” Marco said. “One was from pure effort and one was from class. I’m very delighted with how we played and looking forward to playing again on Saturday.”

Although the game was almost over, both teams still looked for a game-winning goal in the final minutes. Both BU and UMBC tried to create opportunities and it was the Retrievers who got the last shot of the game. McDermott made the save to keep UMBC off the board as the game concluded in a 2-2 tie. With the tie, Binghamton clinched the No. 6 seed in the AE tournament and will face No. 3 UMBC in the AE quarterfinals for the second year in a row.

“If the [playoff] game gets tied, we go to penalty kicks, [and] we’ve been working on those for the last month,” Marco said. “I feel like the guys will be prepared for that, so if the game ends like it did today, then we’re going to go to penalty kicks, so we’ll have to be ready for that.”

BU will hit the road and return to UMBC, to take on the Retrievers in the AE quarterfinals on Saturday, Nov. 4. Kickoff is set for 7 p.m. at Retriever Soccer Park in Baltimore, Maryland.