HUNTINGTON – The 2024 edition of the Mountain State Derby rivalry between the No. 10 West Virginia Mountaineers and the No. 8 Marshall Thundering Herd just so happened to decide the outcome of the regular season Sun Belt conference championship.
Entering the contest at Hoops Family Field on Tuesday evening, the Mountaineers (10-1-6) stood atop the SBC standings with 18 points, and the Herd (9-1-6) sat in second place with 16 points. That set the scene on a perfect night in Huntington for WVU to secure the title needing to at least earn a draw or win, while Marshall saw itself in a must-win situation to defend its title from 2023.
After 90 minutes of scoreless soccer, the West Virginia Mountaineers captured their first-ever Sun Belt regular season title with a 0-0 draw against the Thundering Herd.
“It’s so hard in a game like that when you know that a draw is all you need,” WVU head coach Dan Stratford said. “We came in with the goal to win the game. Then at halftime its scoreless and we wanted to come out and try to find a goal quickly in the second half, then you start looking at the clock and its getting shorter and shorter on time. I don’t envy the players in those moments. We showed incredible character and resolve to see it through and earn the result needed in a place where it’s extremely difficult to do so.”
Despite the result, the match saw plenty of chances as Marshall fired 20 shots to WVU’s seven.
The first chance came early for the Herd as they nearly found the end of a cross that was fired across the box from the left wing three minutes into the game.
Another came with 25 minutes left in the first half as the Mountaineers committed a turnover in the midfield that allowed Marshall to counter and find an open shot on net from the top of the box that was saved by WVU goalkeeper Marc Bonnaire, one of his three saves in the contest.
The match entered the halftime break without either team finding the opening goal in the first 40 minutes.
That nearly changed less than five minutes into the second half as Marshall forced another turnover by the WVU defense, this time seeing an attacker through on goal with only Bonnaire to beat. But Bonnaire was equal to the task, denying the goal and preserving the Hard from taking a 1-0 lead.
“Tonight required everyone, it was a different type of performance and style for us tonight,” Stratford said. “We aren’t used to giving up that much territory in our matches but that’s what the flow of the game and the scenario of it all called for.”
Marshall saw most of the ball on offense in the second half, but the Mountaineers held true in defense and earned the result they needed to claim the SBC regular season title for the first time in program history.
“It means a lot because we’ve never done it before,” Stratford said. “Last year we had such a historic season but didn’t have any sort of huge accolade to recognize it. This year we made sure to set our eyes on taking home some hardware and a title. It’s something that we will definitley remember and hold on to for a long time.”
With the victory, WVU clinches the No. 1 seed in next week’s SBC sonference tournament, and will have home field throughout. WVU will begin the 2024 Sun Belt Conference tournament on Sunday, November 10 against Georgia Southern at 3:00 p.m. at Dick Dlesk Soccer Stadium.
“We are very happy to have the chance to be home as much as we can,” Stratford said. “It’s somewhere we’ve only lost once in the last four years, so I would say our players have some confidence when they step on to their home turf.”
