Northeastern beat Drexel in convincing fashion, 3-0 yesterday night at Parsons Field, extending their 2011 undefeated home campaign and boosting them into a tie for third place in the Colonial Athletic Association (CAA) standings.
“We knew that, for us to push on, it’s win or lose time in the last three games,” head coach Brian Ainscough said. “Home has been good to us this season … When [we] win 3-0, it definitely boosts our confidence.”
The Huskies (9-5-2, 5-3-1 CAA) will face Old Dominion University, which currently sits in second place in the CAA and are No. 7 nationally, at home Saturday and end their season on the road Nov. 5 at fifth-place College of William & Mary. If they win each of those games, Northeastern will claim its fifth playoff berth in the past six seasons.
“We got James Madison [University ranked] seventh in the country right now and Old Dominion 10, and we feel we’re as good as those teams,” Ainscough said, who Wednesday earned his 50th win in seven seasons as skipper of the Huskies, said. “We’ve left some points on the table against teams not so good this year, and we want to finish strong, win our next two games and get ready for playoffs.”
Wednesday’s win was Northeastern’s largest margin of victory over an opponent this year. They dominated play in the first half, outnumbering the Dragons in corner kicks (6-1) and total shots (8-3). But the breakthrough didn’t come until the 36th minute.
From about 30 yards out, senior midfielder Top Phataraprasit played a high cross that found senior forward Mike Kennedy near the far end line. Kennedy headed the ball down to junior midfielder and co-captain Andre Ciliotta, who volleyed it into the upper left corner of the goal for his second goal of the year.
“I saw the ball crossing from Top [Phataraprasit],” Ciliotta said. “Then I saw Mike crossing the ball back, so I just had one thing in my mind – just shoot it and score. It was good luck that it went in.”
But they didn’t stop there. Sophomore midfielder Dante Marini doubled the Huskies’ lead with his team-leading seventh goal of the year when he took a cross from sophomore forward Ricardo McDonald and tucked a shot past Drexel (4-10-2, 3-5-1 CAA) sophomore keeper Pentti Pussinen. Seven minutes later, at the 79-minute mark, Kennedy made it a 3-0 lead when he took a pass from sophomore defender Nikko Lara and dribbled to the top of the penalty box before sliding a ball on the ground past Pussinen.
Ciliotta commended Kennedy and Marini for their play in the match and throughout 2011.
“Mike [Kennedy] has always been amazing to our team and this year is no exception,” Ciliotta said. “Although he hasn’t been scoring many goals, he’s really important for the team. And Dante – this year he has been amazing. It’s incredible how many goals he has scored, and he’s a great player, so it comes really easy for him.”
Ainscough said the offensive burst came when the Huskies’ tried a new formational tactic featuring junior Don Anding at center forward between Kennedy and senior forward Josh Semerene.
“We wanted to get into their attacking half as much as we could,” he said. “We know [Anding] can do well up there and we hadn’t been scoring goals the way we like to score. He was the one that caused all the headaches for everybody on their team. He opened up everything for our players tonight.”
Drexel failed to appear on the score sheet, but not for lack of opportunities. The Dragons forced Blum throughout the game and junior forward Malcolm LeBourne tested the Huskies’ back line multiple times. In the 11th minute, LeBourne got behind the Northeastern defense and hit a volley off a bouncing ball that produced a fingertip save from Blum at the top of the 18-yard box.
But Blum stopped all of the Dragons’ attempts on frame for his fourth clean sheet of the season. Ciliotta said the shutout was indicative both of Blum’s play and the performance of Northeastern’s back line.
“It’s not only Olly [Blum] making the saves,” Ciliotta added. “He’s been great for us too, but the whole defense has been really, really organized. You can see that — Ambry [Moss], Ryan [Burnham] — they are all really tough in the back, so they make it hard to score on us.”
Northeastern improved to 6-0-0 at Parsons Field and has won five of their last six contests overall. They had their four-game unbeaten streak snapped Saturday night when they dropped a 4-1 decision at George Mason University (GMU). Conceding early goals once again proved to be the Huskies’ demise.
The Patriots’ offensive onslaught began early when junior forward Taylor Morgan scored his ninth goal of the season in the 16th minute. Morgan took a ball from freshman midfielder Verneri Valimaa on the left flank, then dribbled into the penalty box and slotted a ball past Blum from 10 yards out.
“We’ve kind of been shooting ourselves in the foot all season by letting the other team score first,” Blum said Monday. “We thought we were playing well until then. Just a bit of sloppy play at the back, turned the ball over. They were able to just counter well and get a quick goal.”
The Huskies responded less than 20 minutes later when Marini scored his sixth goal of the season in the 35th minute. Phataraprasit found Marini with a ball from the left side of the penalty box, and Marini tucked a low shot to the far post and past sophomore keeper Sean Cote. Suddenly, Marini said, there was hope.
“I thought we were a little bit unlucky to go down 1-0,” Marini said Monday. “We started the game off pretty well and we responded all right with a goal. I think for a little bit there we thought we would get back into it and had some confidence that we were going to be able to push on and get another one.”
But by the end of the first half, Patriots freshman midfielder Leo Stolz had single-handedly crushed whatever optimism the Huskies had.
Stolz tallied a pair of goals less than two minutes apart, sending GMU (7-6-3, 4-4-1 CAA) into the halftime break with a lead that would prove to be more than enough for the remainder of the game. Just before the 39-minute mark, a deflected cross fell to Stolz, who put a shot past Blum for his second goal of the season. His third came in the 41st minute when he slid onto the end of a cross from freshman forward Timmy Mulgrew and poked the ball out of Blum’s reach and into the net.
“It kind of deflated us. I think it’s partially our own fault,” Blum said. “After Dante [Marini’s] goal, we might have been a little too relaxed … it’s kind of on us for letting up before the two goals happened and then when it happened, we found ourselves in a tough place.”
The Huskies never recovered. GMU senior midfielder Ryan Gracia added a fourth goal in the 87th minute to up the Patriots’ lead to three. It was the first time this season that Northeastern allowed more than three goals.
Ainscough attributed GMU’s offensive outburst to fundamental errors and mistakes committed by the entire Northeastern squad.
“We thought we were playing pretty well, even though we went down a goal,” Ainscough said. “But for about a three-minute time period just at the end of the [first] half, we just really made two bad, bad blunders and we could never get ourselves back in the game.”
Despite allowing a season-high four goals, Blum was still called upon to make nine saves, also a season-high. He said the Patriots were able to get more shots on frame because of the Huskies’ increased second-half efforts to produce the goal that would get them back into the game.
“We were chasing the game from behind, so we probably weren’t as cautious in the back as we could have been,” said the 6-foot-2 North Yarmouth, Maine native. “It wasn’t that the defense played bad, it was more that we were pressing and we kind of had to give up a little at the back to try to get another goal.”
GMU ended the match with a 13-3 advantage in shots on goal, but Marini said the figure was not representative of the scoring opportunities the Huskies managed to produce in both halves.
“The game was a lot closer than a 13-3 shot game,” Marini, who also leads the team in assists and points, said. “We were creating a lot of pressure inside the box. We just weren’t getting a lot of chances on goal. [GMU] were just taking a lot of the chances they got.”
Northeastern will have their work cut out for them when Old Dominion comes to town Saturday to try to hand the Huskies their first loss at Parsons Field in 2011. But Ciliotta was confident that the key to success is playing the way they did against Drexel Wednesday.
“We gotta go with the same intensity as we did today, and just keep in mind that we can actually win,” Ciliotta said. “We’re a great team, one of the better teams, I think, in the league, so we have to win and go to the playoffs.”
