2002 PSAC CHAMPIONS |
Championship
ESU Booters on Road Again Saturday,
Travel
to Southern New Hampshire for Quarters
By Pete Nevins
for The Pocono Record
EAST STROUDSBURG – Call them the Road Warriors. The championship East Stroudsburg University men’s soccer team will be on the road again this weekend for the NCAA Division II tournament quarter-finals.
The ESU booters, the NCAA Northeast Regional champions, will travel to Manchester, N.H. to take on Southern New Hampshire University, the New England champion, in a 12 noon game Saturday.
The Warriors won their first round tourney game at West Chester Sunday, 1-1, 4-2 on penalty kicks. Southern New Hampshire advanced with a 1-0 upset win over Southern Connecticut.
For the second straight week, ESU is ranked higher nationally than its opponent, but still has to play an away game.
The Warriors were ranked eighth in the last NCAA Division II national poll while Southern New Hampshire was 11th. West Chester was ranked 16th in the nation.
"That’s the hand we’ve been dealt by the NCAA committee and that’s the hand we’ll have to play," said a disappointed Sheska, who had hoped to get at least one tournament game at Eiler-Martin Stadium.
The Penmen received the home field designation based on a higher regional seed. They were selected as the number one seed in New England after winning the Northeast-10 Conference title.
ESU was only the second seed behind West Chester in the Northeast Region despite winning its sixth straight Pennsylvania State Athletic Conference title. The NCAA committee’s stated reason for giving West Chester the top seed was the Rams' higher strength of schedule rating.
The Warriors will carry a 17-1-2 record into Saturday’s game with the only loss a 3-2 overtime defeat to Shippensburg in early October. They beat Bloomsburg, 4-1, and Millersville, 4-0, in the conference playoffs, two teams which they tied during the regular season.
The 17 wins are one shy of the school record of 18 set by the 1994 squad which finished 18-4. The one loss is the team’s least under Sheska, who has guided the squad for 20 years to a 311-113-21 record. His 1989 team dropped only three games in finishing 17-3-3.
Southern New Hampshire, led by fifth-year coach Tom Poitras, is 18-2-2 with the only losses early in the season to Saint Leo, 2-1, and to UMass-Lowell, 3-2. They won a second meeting against UMass-Lowell, 1-0, in the Northeast-10 tournament finals.
This will be rematch of an NCAA quarter-final round game two years ago won by ESU, 4-2, at Eiler-Martin with forward Tom Mustac getting a ‘hat trick.’
Mustac, now a senior, continues to be a big-game scorer with three goals in the conference championship win over Millersville and the only goal in the NCAA first round game against West Chester. He has 14 goals and seven assists for the season.
Junior forward Jorge Chapoy is the team’s leading scorer with 21 goals and eight assists and was one of three ESU players to make the All-PSAC first team. The others were All-America sweeper back Sean Stewart and midfielder Wesley Gayle.
Mustac, midfielder Mike Lotocki, the team leader in assists with 12, and stopper back Kamar Samuels were second team selections.
Both of Southern New Hampshire’s forwards, Mourni Tajiou and Cassio Ribeiro, made the All-Northeast 10 first team. Tajiou, a second-year player and graduate student from Sweden, has 22 goals and nine assists while Ribeiro, a transfer last year from Mercer County, N.J. College, has eight goals and six assists.
Two other Penmen, midfielders Robby VanRykel and Romelle Burgess made the All-Conference second team.
Both teams have freshman goalies. ESU’s Bill Sterner has allowed only seven goals in 19 games with eight shutouts for a 0.45 goal-against average. He made a key save on West Chester’s fourth penalty kick attempt which with ESU holding a 3-2 lead virtually clinched Sunday’s first round victory.
The Penmen’s goalie, Adam Spinelli was named the Northeast-10 Conference Rookie of the Year after giving up only 12 goals in 21 games with 11 shutouts for a 0.59 goal-against average.
ESU is appearing in its 18th NCAA soccer tournament, 15th at the Division II level. The Warriors’ furthest advance was to the semi-finals two years ago when they lost to Barry, 2-1.
Southern New Hampshire is playing in its 12th NCAA tourney. The Penmen won the Division II title in 1989.
The winner of Saturday’s game will play the winner of a contest between Mercyhurst (15-1) and Rockhurst (15-2) in the semi-finals.
The other quarter-final round games will match Sonoma State (17-3-1) against Midwestern State (14-0-4) and Southern Carolina-Spartanburg (19-2) against Central Arkansas (16-1-2).
The semi-finals and finals will be played in Virginia Beach, Va. Dec. 6th and 8th.
The tournament first round produced numerous upsets with four of the top five teams in last week’s NCAA Division II poll all losing.
Top-ranked Barry bowed to Central Arkansas, 2-1, in double overtime; second-ranked Southern Connecticut lost to Southern New Hampshire, third-ranked Incarnata Word was beaten by Midwestern State, 3-2, and fifth-ranked Cal State Dominguez Hills went down to Sonoma State, 3-2, in double overtime.
The only top five team to advance was fourth-ranked Mercyhurst, which trounced District of Columbia, 6-0. Seventh-ranked South Carolina-Spartanburg is the only other remaining team ranked ahead of ESU.
"That just shows that all the teams are good and any team can beat any other team when you get to this stage of the season," said Sheska. "As a coach, you have to make sure your team doesn’t make mistakes and puts away its scoring chances in order to win and advance."
ESU played once before on the Southern New Hampshire field, but not against the Penmen. They trounced St. Anselm, 5-1, in a season-opening tournament game on the field two years ago.
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