Nov. 14, 2008
Contact: Brian McCann
CHICAGO, Ill. - Marco DiFranco's goal with just 100 seconds left vaulted Cleveland State past No. 21 Butler, 1-0, on Friday night at UIC's Flames Field. The win allows the Vikings to advance to Sunday's title match of the Horizon League Championship for the first time since 2002. CSU will play fifth-seeded Loyola, who defeated top-seeded UIC, 1-0, in the other Friday semi-final.
Cleveland State (9-7-3), the third seed in the tournament, has gone 8-1-1 since the start of October after opening the year with just one win in its first nine matches. The Vikings finished third in the conference in the regular season and has claimed a pair of matches in the tournament to date.
Butler, the second seed, ends its season with a 13-2-4 mark.
"We knew that we were going to have to played disciplined defense in order to win tonight," CSU head coach Ali Kazemaini said. "We knew that if we kept our shape defensively and didn't allow Butler to get on the scoreboard, that our chances would come.
"I never would have thought that our chance would come however with less than two minutes left," Kazemaini added.
In a rematch of the Nov. 14 regular season finale that played through two overtimes before ending in a 1-1 tie, neither team was able to penetrate the others defense enough to take the lead.
The Vikings break finally came in the 88th minute when junior Slavisa Ubiparipovic, who earlier in the week was named to the All-Horizon League first team, gained possession in the Bulldog end and snuck a pass ahead through the Butler defense to DiFranco, who ran onto it and slipped a shot low and to the left of the charging goalkeeper that crept inside the back post and into the goal.
"I think Marco surprised the goalkeeper," Kazemaini said. "Slavisa is a special player and he did a great job of threading the needle to get the ball to Marco. Butler has a big goalkeeper who came out and when Marco finessed a shot low instead of blasting it, I think it caught the keeper off guard. It was a perfect play.
"We made some chances with about eight minutes left in the match and took a couple of chances because we knew that the first goal would win it. Our goal was the direct result of that change," Kazemaini added.
The goal was the third of the year for DiFranco and it came on the only shot on goal all night by the Vikings. It was also the team-leading fourth assist and 14th point of the season for Ubiparipovic.
Butler pressed during the final 1:40, getting a pair of scoring opportunities, but Viking netminder Nick Harpel repelled both, finishing with four saves to record his sixth shutout of the year.
The win served as another example of the amazing turn around by the Vikings this year, who after back-to-back 5-0 losses to UIC and Loyola to end September, sported a 1-6-2 record.
"The first part of the season was tough," Kazemaini said. "We scheduled knowing that if we played good teams, it would pay off in the long run, which it has, but we expected to do a little better than we did in the first month.
"The win over Green Bay (on Oct. 3) turned the whole season around. If we didn't score that goal in overtime, we might not have been able to improve things because we didn't have much confidence at time. Fortunately for us, that win started things rolling for us.
"Our recent success has affirmed to our kids that if they stick to the game plan and play within our system that good things can happen.
