Photo by Jonathan Segal
By: Brandon Wise / Staff Writer
The FIU men’s soccer team had a late chance to steal one, but the rally fell short as South Carolina defeated the Golden Panthers 4-3.
The Gamecocks jumped out to a 3-0 lead in just 21 minutes. Head coach Munga Eketebi knows what went wrong.
“It comes down to the little mistakes,” Eketebi said. “We are still starting slow, having 10-15 minutes of mental lapses that digs us in a hole, but it was a little too late.”
The first of those goals came just five minutes into the game when Kevin Stam knocked a ball into the net off a throw-in from Mike Mangotic.
Only eight minutes later, Mangotic got a goal of his own when Trevor Hubbard pushed a pass through the Golden Panther defense and Mangotic finished it off on the right side of the net.
Then in the 20th minute, forward Bradlee Baladez put a shot through to make it 3-0.
Following the third goal, both teams decided to make a few substitutions. The Golden Panthers made the most of this as all three of the preceding goals came from those players, Colby Burdette and Nicolas Rodriguez.
In the 33rd minute of play, Rodriguez received a pass from Burdette down the right side of the field and put it in the top right corner of the net.
Just four minutes later, Burdette received a pass from Rodriguez and shot from 10 yards out for the score. Eketebi can see the development of Burdette right before his eyes.
“That [scoring] is something he should have been doing since the beginning of the year,” Eketebi said. “He still needs to mature a little bit more, but the potential is there.”
Through one half of play, both teams had combined for 16 shots and five goals. Eketebi decided he had seen enough from goalkeeper Rodney Greiling and decided to go with Eric Reyes in the second half.
“Two out of the three goals we gave up were really soft,” Eketebi said. “We felt like we needed a shot in the arm.”
It proved to be the right decision throughout most of the half as the team only allowed five shots in the second half.
With the clock slowly winding down towards the end of the game and the Golden Panthers about to miss out on another chance to pick up a point in the conference standings, Burdette gave them life, burying a shot in the back of the net off a Robeto de Sousa pass.
However, just six minutes later, the Gamecocks dashed the Golden Panthers’ hopes with a Braeden Troyer goal off a rebound from keeper Reyes.
The Golden Panthers now fall to 4-8-3 and 1-5-1 in the conference. They will now head to UAB to take on the Blazers on Oct. 29 in their last conference match of the season before the conference tournament.
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