#1 High Point Downs #4 Gardner-Webb, 1-0, Advances to Title Match
By High Point Athletics
HIGH POINT, N.C. – Alex Abril nets the game winner in the 100th minute to send the High Point University men's soccer team to the Big South Conference Championship. High Point took down Gardner-Webb 1-0 in overtime. HPU will play UNC Asheville next Saturday for the Big South title.
BOX SCORE
Head Coach Zach Haines: "This is a great achievement for the guys, and the program. That's five straight finals in five years. It takes an enormous amount of consistency to reach that in any conference in the country. We are proud of the guys because tonight was a tough game. Gardner-Webb is a talented team and I give them a lot of credit making the game extremely difficult. We were physically and mentally tough, and we did exactly what you need to do to win a knockout game."
HPU held most of the possession early in the first half. Putting pressure on the Bulldogs in their own zone allowed the Panthers to play their type of game.
Josh Caron showed off his ability to get up and punch the ball away early in this match. A shot from beyond midfield from Gardner-Webb had Caron running back towards the net. Caron was able to jump up to just punch the ball away from being a goal.
"He did what he had to do," said Haines. "I don't think I've ever seen an attempt like that. I think the guy meant it to, which makes it impressive. A first-time half volley from 75 yards, off of a second ball, a goalkeeper doesn't train that very often."
Tony Pineda and Jefferson Amaya were able to get the two shots on goal the Panthers had to close out the first half.
High Point was still able to dominate time of possession as the second half got underway. Not much went either teams' way as overtime started to look like a possibility late in the half. Gardner-Webb was playing High Point with one thing in mind.
"It was so tough," said Abril. "The way that they played was just to shut down everything we wanted to do with the ball. We wanted to play good soccer and get the ball wide, get crosses in the box, but they were just so difficult to play against."
The whistle blew at the end of regulation. The score tied at 0, The Panthers and Bulldogs would get a chance to battle it out in two 10-minute halves before heading into penalty kicks if necessary.
Heading into the first 10 minutes of overtime, Gardner-Webb was still giving High Point some trouble as they were looking to defend their box and play for penalties.
As the first overtime was looking like it was going to close still tied at 0, Abril with 25 seconds remaining did what HPU was looking for all night. Abril took a stunning feed from Seth Antwi splitting three defenders to just get a touch on the ball. Abril netted his third goal of the year and gave High Point the lead heading into the second 10-minute overtime.
"I was surprised it fell to me," said Abril. "As a striker, your chance comes once out of every 15 chances you might get. It was really good to be able to win the game for us. I can't say enough about how Seth played. That was a perfect pass he played me that set me up perfectly."
High Point was able to hold off Gardner-Webb in the final 10-minute overtime to advance to the Big South Conference Championship game.
High Point outshot Gardner-Webb 19-6 and 9-6 on corners.