Marshall Men\u2019s Soccer Recap<\/p>\n
By Shane Darling, FM 88 Sports Director<\/p>\n
HUNTINGTON, W. Va. (WMUL-FM) \u2014 VCU (0-2-2) struck first on Sunday evening at Hoops Family Field and had every golden opportunity available to take down the nationally ranked Herd, but Marshall (1-0-2) continued its come from behind ways.<\/p>\n
The Thundering Herd dominated possession for the first six minutes of the matchup when Marshall\u2019s Nikita Pakhomov put a shot off the left post. The Rams collected the rebound and sent it long past the defense to Ty Johnson. He was able to poke it past Marshall\u2019s freshman goalie, Yurij Obert, who came off his line, and Johnson finished one of the easiest open-net goals that he\u2019ll ever get. After Marshall pounced on VCU, putting all the pressure in the world on the Rams, the Herd saw itself down 1-0.<\/p>\n
The Thundering Herd responded eight minutes later off a strike from Thiago Apolinario from about thirty-yards out in the left-center of the pitch. He hit the bottom-right corner of the net, just past the outstretched hands of VCU\u2019s goalie, Manuel Monteiro. This gives Apolinario three goals on the season, the next highest amount for the Herd is a handful of players with one apiece.<\/p>\n
Later in the first half, Marshall\u2019s defensive line had two miscommunications that resulted in a couple 1-v-1 opportunities with the keeper for freshman forward Kimarly Scott. The first instance, Scott fired the shot right at Obert for the easy save. The next chance, Scott kept it away from the keeper but put it wide right. So, VCU had its chances to take a lead going into halftime, but the game stayed even.<\/p>\n
Marshall followed the script from the start of the first 45 minutes and came out flying in the second half. However, this time the Thundering Herd rewarded itself. Marshall kept the ball in its attacking half for the first four minutes and thirty seconds before Joao Roberto collected a deflected ball from a Marshall cross at the top of the 18-yard box and slotted it into the bottom-left of the net. This gave the Herd its first lead of the night almost 50 minutes into the match over an unranked, winless opponent.<\/p>\n
VCU was able to ramp up the pressure and sustain possession in Marshall\u2019s defensive half, but the Rams were not able to get shots off towards the net. With just six minutes to go in the game, VCU tallied only its second shot of the second half. David Leavey rose up on the<\/p>\n
receiving end of a cross, but his header went just wide-left and crashed into the side of the net. Kimarly Scott got another chance staring down the Herd keeper, but Obert came off his line and extended his body to make the save with just over five minutes to go.<\/p>\n
Marshall asserted its dominance late, barely letting VCU sniff the ball in the last five minutes. Carl Romberg was able to ice it for the Herd with 14 seconds left as he capitalized on a VCU defensive mistake. A bad touch from the Rams\u2019 back line let the ball squeak to Romberg, and he was in between three defenders when he popped the ball over the keeper into the top-right part of the net from about 10 yards out.<\/p>\n
This brought the game to its final score, 3-1, improving Marshall\u2019s record to 2-0-2 on the year while VCU dropped to 0-3-2.<\/p>\n
VCU will host UCF on Friday with kickoff at 3 p.m., while the Thundering Herd will host Utah Valley on Friday with kickoff at 7:15 p.m.<\/p>\n
You can tune in to the Herd\u2019s Friday contest on 88.1 WMUL-FM and online on Stream 1 at www.marshall.edu\/wmul. FM 88 Sports\u2019 Anthony Doria and Ethan Patrick will be on the call.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Marshall Men\u2019s Soccer Recap By Shane Darling, FM 88 Sports Director HUNTINGTON, W. Va. (WMUL-FM) \u2014 VCU (0-2-2) struck first on Sunday evening at Hoops Family Field and had every golden opportunity available to take down the nationally ranked Herd, but Marshall (1-0-2) continued its come from behind ways. The Thundering Herd dominated possession for<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1101,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1192,1829,5],"tags":[100,111,330,28,138,142,181,328,329,23,212,332],"class_list":["post-5297","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles","category-mens-soccer","category-wmul-sports","tag-fm88-sports","tag-hoops-family-field","tag-marshall-soccer","tag-marshall-university","tag-marshall-university-athletics","tag-sbc-soccer","tag-shane-darling","tag-shane-darling-marshall","tag-shane-darling-wmul","tag-thundering-herd","tag-thundering-herd-athletics","tag-thundering-herd-soccer"],"acf":[],"fimg_url":false,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.marshall.edu\/wmul\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5297","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.marshall.edu\/wmul\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.marshall.edu\/wmul\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.marshall.edu\/wmul\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1101"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.marshall.edu\/wmul\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5297"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.marshall.edu\/wmul\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5297\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5298,"href":"https:\/\/www.marshall.edu\/wmul\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5297\/revisions\/5298"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.marshall.edu\/wmul\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5297"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.marshall.edu\/wmul\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5297"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.marshall.edu\/wmul\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5297"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}