11-5-24
The long-awaited day came, and the Sun Belt Conference regular season title was awarded on a beautiful Tuesday night battle at Hoops Family field. The Mountaineers strolled in posting a 10-1-5 overall record and stood alone at the top of the Sun Belt Conference with a 5-0-3 conference record. The Thundering Herd held an impressive and similar 9-1-5 record but was second in the SBC with a 4-0-4 conference record. This meaning that the Herd required a win in order to win the conference title, a tie or loss would give the trophy to the Mountaineers and leave Marshall in second place.
The match started with Marshall having a solid scoring opportunity as senior midfielder Pablo Simon slid to finish a cross, but he could not make solid enough contact and the shot went wide.
For the most part, West Virginia came out with its foot on the pedal and kept the ball in its attacking third. The Mountaineers won three corner kicks in the first 17 minutes, and while the balls put in from these corners looked threatening, nothing came from them.
The closest opportunity of the first half came in the 28th minute when senior forward Tarik Pannholzer hammered a shot from a few yards outside of the box over WVU’s redshirt-senior goalkeeper Marc Bonnaire, but it bounced off the top woodwork.
The Mountaineers had two solid opportunities in the last five minutes of the half, but shots from sophomore Sam Nyenka and junior Ewald Felix were denied by impressive stops from Marshall’s redshirt-freshman goalie Dan Rose.
Marshall would out-shoot WVU in the first half 7-4, but neither squad found the back of the net.
The second half began with Tarik Pannholzer stealing the ball from a WVU defender in the 48th minute and having a dream one-on-one with the goalie. However, Pannholzer slowed up, took a step to his right and put the ball wide left of the net. In the time that he slowed up and stepped out, a Mountaineer defender was able to recover and Pannholzer would have needed a solid shot to the side of the net to find nylon.
West Virginia took two shots over the next 10 minutes, but neither were close enough to be considered truly threatening.
In the 62nd minute, Pablo Simon hit a beautiful through-ball ahead to Marshall’s leading goal scorer, senior Lineker Rodrigues dos Santos, who was able to get a touch ahead and beat the goalie. While he had an open net in front of him, he was moving at a fast pace and had a tough angle, and the ball went wide left.
That would be the best chance of the night for either team, and the game would end in a scoreless draw. Marshall had plenty of chances to bring home the hardware, outshooting WVU 13-7 on the game and leading in shots on goal 3-2, but unfortunately could not make it happen.
Sun Belt Conference Tournament play begins for the Herd with the quarterfinals on Sunday, as it will host seventh seed in the SBC Old Dominion University at 7 p.m. at Hoops Family Field. Marshall defeated the Monarchs during the regular season 2-1, and it will look for victory once again to move on in tournament play.