Tar Heels best Virginia to advance to ACC Championship game

The North Carolina men’s soccer team found itself in overtime for the sixth time this season in the semifinals of the ACC tournament.

But this was one of UNC’s shorter ventures into the extra frame as it lasted just three minutes before Billy Schuler netted the golden goal to eliminate Virginia from the competition.

Rob Lovejoy got the ball with some space on the right side of the field and beat the outside back to make a run on goal. Just steps away from goal, Lovejoy slid a pass over to the streaking Schuler who hit a wide open left side of the net.

“We want to score as early as possible and get it over quickly because overtime is so short,” Schuler said. “We had a lot of chances we were just fortunate to finish the first one in overtime.”

The Tar Heels, like many of the other overtime games they have been in this season, dominated possession for the entirety of the match. UNC fired 21 shots in regulation compared to just four from the Cavaliers.

The Tar Heels held the Cavaliers to just one shot in the first half while posting eight themselves including two point blank misses.

The first blown chance came early in the 16th minute when Rob Lovejoy sent a cross in from the right side to find Glen Long. Long headed it down to Urso who blasted it first time over the bar. The shot came from inside the six.

The Tar Heels other missed opportunity came 15 minutes later when Ben Speas tried a ball towards the middle that deflected to Jordan McCrary, who also missed the frame point blank range.

“You can’t dwell on your misses,” Lovejoy said. “You just have to think you’re going to get the next one and put it away. that’s kind of been the story for our entire season. Most of our games we’ve outshot our opponent.”

Somoano also realizes that the Tar Heels usually take a lot more shots than do their opponents, but
Somoano doesn’t look at that statistic with any ire.

“In terms of shots not going in, I have no issue with that,” Somoano said. “That’s soccer, it’s hard to score.  It’s probably the hardest thing to do in sports. Everyone says hitting a baseball is the hardest thing to do, but scoring a goal, if you look at the percentages is the hardest thing to do.

“We don’t get rattled if we have whatever stat shots and we don’t score, it doesn’t matter…. I’m not looking at oh gosh, we’re one for 22. It doesn’t bother me as long as we get one.”

Before sending the Tar Heels through to the final, Schuler spent the first half on the bench like he did in the quarterfinal match with N.C State. Somoano said that Schuler has a muscle strain in his leg and the coaching staff is being cautious with his playing time so his status is still flexible.