Junior George Campbell scored the game-winning goal in double overtime to lift top-seeded Maryland to a 3-2 win against No. 8 seed Michigan Sunday in the quarterfinal round of the 2016 Big Ten Men’s Soccer Championship.
Campbell and sophomore D.J. Reeves accounted for the scoring for Maryland (16-0-2) which moved its winning streak to 13 straight games. The Terps have not lost since Oct. 31, 2015 – a stretch of 23 matches. Sunday’s win was Maryland’s third consecutive double-overtime decision.
After Gordon Wild put a solid cross in the box, an error by the Michigan defense put the Terps on the board on an own goal in the 30th minute.
A flurry of action would cap the first half as both teams exchanged goals with three minutes to play in the stanza. Michigan evened the score at one apiece with a Tyler Anderson goal at 41:59 before Reeves netted his second goal of the season on a beautifully-played ball by senior defender Chris Odoi-Atsem in the 44th minute.
Todd
Campbell’s shot wasn’t great but his turn on the ball was. I think it caught MSU’s goalie (who was not their starter)a bit by surprise. Terps had some great chances and hit two posts in the last five minutes of regulation.
The BTN announcers noted that the team has been putting some undue pressure on themselves and is focused on being undefeated and it shows a little bit. Their last seven wins have all been by one goal, four have needed at least one overtime, the last three have all been double overtime and Niedermeier hasn’t had a clean sheet since the five game shutout streak ended.
That tells me that a loss in the B1GT semis might not be such a terrible thing. It would give the Terps an extra 2 days rest and maybe get them to focus more on the big prize than on the zero in the loss column.
· 11/12/2019