UK wins without leading scorer

October 22, 2008 | Filed under: Sports News | Posted by:

With two of its biggest offensive threats missing from Wednesday night’s game against the University of Central Florida, the UK men’s soccer team relied on different players to win 2-1.

Missing from action was UK’s leading scorer, senior forward Michael Strong, and freshman forward Taylor White. Strong has scored seven goals already this season, while White has contributed two goals and two assists. Strong was nursing an injured hamstring and White suffered from a bruised kneecap.

“It’s always difficult when you lose two of the best attacking players,” senior midfielder Chad Hagerty said. “It was a great opportunity to step up by guys like C.J. Tappel, Tim Crone and Marco dos Santos. Everybody was stepping up and contributing to the game.”

Tim Crone, UK’s second-leading scorer, gave UK a 2-1 advantage in the 77th minute with his fifth goal of the year. Off of a Hagerty assist, Crone drove the ball home on a ball dropped into oncoming traffic by UCF (6-8-0, 3-3-0 Conference USA) goalkeeper Sean Johnson.

In the 70th minute, UK (8-4-2, 4-1-0 C-USA) tied the game at 1-1 with Tappel, a sophomore midfielder getting his first goal of the season. Breaking through the defense, Tappel kicked a low shot straight through to the goal, taking the assist from Masumi Turnbull, who took an initial assist from dos Santos.

“Breaking through I had a lot of chances, and one finally went in for me,” Tappel said.

UK head coach Ian Collins said he was proud that his team continued to battle against Central Florida, especially after falling behind early.

“I thought that Central Florida played hard. They’re a difficult team to play against. The last thing we wanted to do would be to give them the first goal, and we gave it to them. We keep playing, we keep grinding away. The players really didn’t get nervous, they stuck to the task and got it going,” Collins said. “Crone, Hagerty, Tappel, dos Santos, those were two high level goals. They didn’t panic and kept it going.”

Tappel said he knew the game would be important due to the standings in C-USA. The Cats and Central Florida were both tied for second place in C-USA and a win would help boost UK’s resumé for the NCAA Tournament.

“Coming into the game, we knew that if we won we would be in second place by ourselves, and that we needed to get on a roll to get to the NCAA’s,” Tappel said.