#3 Penn St. Altoona and #5 La Roche College each picked up first round victories in the AMCC men's soccer championship tournament Saturday afternoon. Both teams advance to the semifinals, to be played Wednesday evening.
#3 Penn St. Altoona 2, Mount Aloysius 1
#3 Penn State Altoona grabbed a 2-1 victory over #6 Mount Aloysius College on Saturday afternoon in an AMCC tournament first round game at Spring Run Stadium. Junior defender Alhaji Umaru Koroma and sophomore forward Matthew Hibbs scored goals for the Lions (11-6-1, 6-2-1 AMCC). Sophomore goalkeeper Liam Grady made four saves between the pipes for his 11th win of the year. Mount Aloysius (10-8-1, 4-5 AMCC) took a 1-0 lead at 13:44, when sophomore midfielder Thomas Sloan stole the ball from a Lions player and beat the goalkeeper to his right on a shot from inside the box. But Penn State Altoona evened the score 1-1 at 36:26. Freshman defender Jacob Weaver headed the ball from the left of the Mount Aloysius goal to the front, and Koroma was there to fire a shot past the keeper. In the second half, Hibbs came up with the game-winning goal for the Lions. He took a pass in the box from sophomore forward Michael Carrigan and sent a shot past the keeper's left that tucked just inside the right goal post at 67:43 to put Penn State Altoona up 2-1.
Next up, Penn State Altoona men's soccer will travel to play #2 Medaille College on Wednesday, November 2 at 6:00 p.m. in the AMCC semifinal round.
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La Roche 2, Franciscan 1 (OT)
Ximo Vicent blasted a strike past the Franciscan goalkeeper just 54 seconds into overtime to lift La Roche to a 2-1 lead and advance to an AMCC Semifinal game at Penn State Behrend. La Roche will travel to Behrend next Wednesday at a time still TBD. The Redhawks converted their first shot into a goal to take 1-0 lead in the eleventh minute and put the pressure on Franciscan. Sophomore forward Elliott Dick sent a cross into the middle of the box and junior forward Tyler Grebur got a head on it for the early score.
Franciscan stepped up their attack in the second half to look for the equalizer. Gorman made two big saves, but former AMCC Player of the Year, Franciscan junior forward Leo Herrmann, finally broke through in the eighty-first minute, to tie the game at 1-1 and eventually send it into OT.
Like in the first half, La Roche needed just one shot to send them to the semis. Vicent provided the heroics blasting a Grebur feed past a diving Baron goalkeeper.
La Roche returns to the AMCC Tournament Semifinals for the second year in a row and the fourth time in the past five seasons.