WELLSBURG—Defense is the Morgantown Mohigans’ calling card and has been the majority of the season.
Whether it be stellar goalie play or an unyielding back line, MHS pitched 11 shutouts, including three in a row coming into Thursday’s Class AAA, Region I soccer championship match against rival Univesity.
The result? Another win, another shutout, and another trip to Beckley for head coach Sam Snyder, all thanks to the team’s relentless defensive unit.
“The defense played phenomenal,” Snyder said as the Mohigans improved to 17-4-1. “We got away from that for a bit with some injuries, but it’s now four straight shutouts and when you keep zeros on the board, you give yourself a chance.”
A game University outfit nearly matched its rival’s defensive stop for defensive stop, if not for one play in the first half.
Fittingly, the game’s lone score came off the strong right foot of Morgantown defender Fynn Rolston.
With 20:27 showing, Rolston took a free kick from the left side, lofting a powerful shot that bent left the last few yards and out of the reach of Hawks’ keeper Connor Montgomery.
That one goal marred an otherwise impressive outing from Montgomery, who made a number of brilliant saves, including jumping up to block an attempt for Morgantown’s Rayyan Hanif at near point-blank range.
University’s defense was just as strong Thursday, not allowing MHS to get good shot attempts at the net, including on a number of free and corner kicks.
The chances were there, but UHS prevented their rivals from finishing—save for one.
“I think with a couple of exceptions that didn’t hurt us, our defense played fairly disciplined,” University head coach Michael Smith said. “We were strong in the air, challenged everything and were appropriately aggressive.
“Kudos to the back line. They showed up.”
Snyder was equally as complimentary of the Hawks’ defensive efforts.
He knows his team went through a number of prime scoring opportunities with the lone goal to show for it. The Mohigans will need to finish better in Beckley if they hope to leave Raleigh County with another Class AAA championship.
“They made a few last-ditch amazing plays, either good header clearances or amazing saves by the goalie,” Smith said of University. “They pressed us well and made it hard. We talked about it all week that when it comes to the playoffs, you have to grind and score off set pieces and we were able to do that.
“We were just missing (offensively). We’d get a dangerous ball into a dangerous area and we’d get that first touch, but someone would make a play and we couldn’t get the next to finish it off.
“We need to improve a bit more on that.”
Montgomery finished with 10 stops in net for the Hawks.
His counterpart, senior Tyler Crites, needed only four saves to preserve his clean sheet and only one of those four was the Mohigans’ keeper legitimately challenged.
“They have a really solid backline,” Smith said of Morgantown. “They’ve been that way all season and, to be quite honest, having to worry about their offense as well made it a lot to handle. We felt if we could stay compact on our end and wear them down and frustrate them, maybe we could get a break and get one to go in.”
UHS nearly got just that.
Late in the second half, Morgantown attempted another free kick, but the ball went a bit too far north of the penalty box, where a University player booted it downfield into the path of Brady Grubb.
Grubb outmaneuvered a defender and passed the ball ahead to Alex Lopez Maldonado, who worked it up the left sideline, finally getting a solid attempt at Crites, who turned the shot away.
BY MIKE HUGHES
