By Eoghan Kelly, News Staff
With the sun quickly setting below the Philadelphia skyline and less than five minutes separating the men’s soccer team from penalty kicks in the Colonial Athletic Association (CAA) Men’s Championship game, the Huskies entered desperation mode.
They were reluctant to sweat out the remaining minutes of double overtime and gamble on penalty kicks after their shootout loss to the University of Delaware in the 2011 CAA quarterfinals, even more reluctant because their opponent, Hofstra University, had already survived penalty shootouts in both the quarterfinals and semifinals days before.
The Huskies were desperate for a game-ender. Fortunately for them, it came from their most reliable game-ender.
“I watched the video and I don’t even remember it happening,” Don Anding said of his sixth game winner of the season. “It was sort of just a desperation shot at that point … By far the best one I’ve ever scored. It was probably the most exhilarating moment of my entire career.”
As the clock ticked closer to the 110-minute mark, senior forward Anding took a short pass from junior midfielder Dante Marini near the top of the penalty box. Without looking up, Anding took three touches to his left and drilled a pinpoint bending shot into the bottom right corner of the net with 4:38 left on the clock.
The game was over. Anding had given Northeastern its first CAA title in school history.
Head coach Brian Ainscough said it was one of the more memorable goals he had seen.
“In a pressure-cooker situation, when it’s double-overtime with penalty kicks facing you against a Hofstra team that went to two penalty kick shootouts [in the first two rounds], and [Anding] goes and pulls that one out of his hat, it was unbelievable,” Ainscough said.
Fast forward roughly 24 hours. The men’s soccer team, clad in matching red and black sweatpants and jackets, gathered in the back of the Cabot Center Team Room early Monday evening.
There was a buzz emanating from the room, an air of excitement about the Huskies, still celebrating their 1-0 double-overtime win over Hofstra University the day before that captured the school’s first-ever CAA title and earned them an automatic bid to the NCAA tournament.
But the security of their guaranteed place in the field of 48 teams was coupled by an anticipation that hung like a fog, building in each player as they anxiously awaited the details of their opening game in the team’s second trip to the Big Dance in school history.
At 5:15 p.m. the projector screen at the front of the room flickered, and onto it came a short message: “SELECTION SHOW BEGINS IN 15 MINUTES.” The team and coaching staff immediately gravitated to the chairs facing the display where they would eventually learn their fate.
Less than 25 minutes later, the speculation subsided. The Huskies had their matchup.
The NCAA announced Northeastern will host crosstown rival Boston College in the first round of the Division I Men’s Soccer Championship tonight at Parsons Field. The winner will take on the fourth-seeded University of Connecticut on Sunday.
The room instantaneously erupted in celebration.
“We’re just thrilled for the boys and the coaching staff and everybody associated with the program,” said Athletic Director Peter Roby, who personally congratulated the team before the selection show. “It’s what they worked hard for, to hopefully have a chance to play in the [national] tournament and make some memories … Really proud of the effort all year and just really happy that the result was the way it was – they seem to really deserve it.”
There was a palpable excitement among everyone in the room for the impending clash with the Eagles (8-5-5, 3-2-3 Atlantic Coast Conference), which is a product of the next saga in the Beantown rivalry.
Northeastern may have limited experience in the national tournament, but it is plenty familiar with its first-round opponents.
The Huskies earned their only other trip to the national tournament in 2002 after they won the America East Conference title, advancing to the second round after beating Lehigh University on penalty kicks.
The team that ended Northeastern’s season that year with a 2-1 second-round win?
Boston College.
But that’s only the beginning.
These days, the two sides often meet in exhibition and preseason games, yielding substantial familiarity between their coaching staffs.
Northeastern assistant coach Adam Pfeifer played his college soccer at BC from 2000-03 and was a member of the 2002 team that knocked Northeastern out of the national tournament and advanced to the NCAA quarterfinals. He also served as an assistant to BC head coach Ed Kelly a year before joining Northeastern.
BC assistant Sergio Saccoccio was an assistant coach at Northeastern from 2006-08 and played goalkeeper for the Huskies from 2002-05, playing on the team that eventually lost to Pfeifer and the Eagles in the second round of the national tournament.
The teams haven’t played in the regular season since 2005 – a 2-1 BC win – but Northeastern thinks it can benefit from its familiarity with the BC program.
“I think coming into it we would have liked to get Boston College,” sophomore defenseman Simon Cox said. “It’s a nice local rivalry. When we played Harvard [College on Sept. 2], we got a big crowd and it was a different type of game, so hopefully we can replicate that against BC.”
Northeastern has never hosted a national men’s soccer tournament game at Parsons Field, but players are confident that playing on home turf will still be an advantage. The Huskies have gone 15-0-1 at home in the last two seasons, their last home loss coming to the College of William & Mary on Nov. 6, 2010.
There’s no reason to believe that luck will stop now, Ainscough said.
“We haven’t lost in 15, 16 games at home, so I think anybody that comes here, whether they’re a local team or not, that’s a big advantage to our club,” Ainscough said. “We’re excited that it’s at home.”
But senior goalkeeper Oliver Blum stressed that the team cannot be overconfident considering BC finished above .500 in a powerhouse conference that is sending five teams – the University of North Carolina, the University of Virginia, the University of Maryland, Wake Forest University and BC – to the national tournament.
“We don’t want to be too confident because, even though we’re at home and we’ve been seeded higher, BC is no easy team to beat,” Blum said. “We’re gonna give them a lot of respect, but I think we should be confident going into the game with the way we’ve been playing.”
After everything this program has experienced over the last five days, it’s difficult for them not to be overcome with confidence.
Nine Huskies walked away from the annual CAA Awards Banquet on Thursday night with individual awards, including senior forward Don Anding (Player of the Year), Cox (Co-Defensive Player of the Year) and Ainscough (Co-Coach of the Year). Three Huskies were also selected to the CAA First Team, two each to the Second and All-Rookie teams and one to the Third Team.
The next night, the Huskies thrashed James Madison University 5-0 in the CAA semifinals behind two goals apiece from Anding and junior defender Conner Alexander. Northeastern held the Dukes (9-7-3), who appeared in the 2011 NCAA tournament, to two shots on goal.
Cox said that defense was the backbone of the Huskies’ play throughout both the CAA tournament and the entire 2012 season.
“When we got to the CAA tournament, we’d been playing together for the whole season so we really know each other, what we do well, what we don’t do well,” Cox said. “We know we were the best team there so we didn’t really have any problems.”
Less than 48 hours later, Anding secured their trip to the national tournament with his highlight reel goal that gave Northeastern the title game over Hofstra (11-6-4).
Now do-or-die time is upon them. There is no longer an opportunity for second chances. A loss means an end to the season and, in some cases, a career. A win all but adds to their legacy as one of the best teams to ever play at Northeastern.
“We know that we’ve come through with a marathon of a season, and winning the CAA Championship, we’re really ecstatic about that,” Ainscough said. “[Now], it’s how do we get them ready for Thursday and get them to focus [on] that, OK, it’s a new challenge, it’s a new season.”
