Box Score
By Chris Riley
ROME--The Hawks welcomed the 25th ranked University of West Alabama to Ben Brady Field on Friday evening and came out with another important Gulf South Conference win and another clean sheet with a 1-0 win.
Nicolas Ferrigno kept his 3rd clean sheet in the past 5 games for the Hawks, and the defensive efforts of the rest of the team provided the base for the win.
Shorter again came out strong in the first half. The first real chance of the game came when
Irvin Espinal broke clean through on goal, but could not find a finish.
The Hawks continued to pressure; with
Kyle Stonecipher dictating play and
Diego Gonzalez coming off the bench to provide some great services from the left hand side it was the Hawks who looked to be the more dangerous side.
Shorter continued to turn the screw for the remainder of the first half, controlling much of the play in the West Alabama half and only allowing shots on their own goal from distance. Despite taking the game to the nationally ranked West Alabama team, the Hawks could not find the breakthrough and the teams came in level at half time.
Shorter came out in the second half with the same energy that they had finished the first half with and it took just 15 minutes for the first real goal scoring opportunity to arise as Espinal struck the crossbar from a free kick.
Espinal again looked dangerous as he found room for a cross that
Balazs Horvath could not convert from just 5 yards out.
As the half grew on West Alabama began to find some opportunities for themselves, though, Ferrigno did his job when called upon and the rest of the Shorter defence closed down each opportunity that UWA could create.
The game looked to be heading into extra time before some neat combination play by Shorter in the 86
th minute found Gonzalez in space on the left, his driven low shot found the back of the net and the Hawks were able to ease through the final 4 minutes of the game to keep themselves standing alone at the top of the Gulf South Conference.
Shorter outshot UWA 13-11 in the game; with the difference being that 7 of Shorter's shots were on target, as opposed to 1 for West Alabama.
"this was a special win for Shorter Men's Soccer, " Coaches
Paulo Neto said after the game, "the first ever win against an NCAA Division 2 top 25 team."
"I felt like we played well enough to win by a larger margin. I am proud of the boys for playing well for the full 90 minutes, which is probably the first time this year that we have showed that consistency for the entire game, hopefully we can continue to ride this momentum."
