Sept. 19, 2007
Contact: Brian McCann
CLEVELAND, Ohio - Josh Williams scored in the 87th minute but the Viking offense continued to struggle as Notre Dame College came away from Krenzler Field with a 4-1 win on Wednesday night.
The loss, CSU's third in a row, drops the Vikings to 2-4-1 on the year while Notre Dame improves to 5-1-1.
"This wasn't our best effort tonight," head coach Ali Kazemaini said. "We played too soft in the first half and allowed Notre Dame to take the lead. By the time we started to get things going, were too far out of it.
:"Notre Dame is a good team. They are led by a good group of seniors who did a nice job of stopping us from getting out offense on track."
Notre Dame to the lead in the 28th minute when Jared Miller slid a beautiful pass from the right corner into the box and Greg Carroll pushed a shot from five yards out past Viking netminder Dan Duric.
The score held until the final 10 minutes when a furious Viking offensive created numerous opportunities at both ends of the field.
The Falcons made it 2-0 at the 81:34 mark when Carroll's free kick from just outside of the box on the left side bounced twice in the penalty area before finding the corner of the net.
"The second Notre Dame goal was the killer," Kazemaini said. "We played entirely too soft defensively. Somebody should have stopped the ball before it got to goal, but nobody did."
CSU would come right back to cut the lead to 2-1 when Josh Williams pounced on a Mitch Boyer shot that Notre Dame goalkeeper Craig Pickering couldn't handle and scored on the rebound at the 86:50 mark.
The comeback would be short-lived as the Falcons took advantage of numbers when CSU was pressing offensively. Carroll finished off a perfect night by breaking alone down the right side. As Viking netminder Nick Harpel, who replaced Duric at halftime, charged, Carroll slid a pass by him and Steve Kane gathered it in and scored on the empty net at the 87:22 mark to give Notre Dame a 3-1 lead.
Kane would score again with 39 seconds left when he gathered in a long pass near midfield and then eluded a charging Harpel, who was the lone CSU defender back, and lofted a shot from 40 yards out that easily scored into the empty net.
Notre Dame has a 12-10 edge in shots with Pickering making five saves in goal.
The contest was a physical one as Notre Dame was called for 23 fouls with CSU being whistled for 15. In addition, each team received three yellow cards and the evening was capped off when CSU's Bryan Henson and Notre Dame's Boris Smoljan were ejected after receiving red cards with 4:10 left.
The Vikings continue their non-conference schedule with a Sunday (Sept. 23) contest at Duquesne.
