The No. 17 Virginia men’s soccer team found itself in deep trouble heading into halftime in Saturday’s ACC matchup against No. 6 Clemson. The Cavaliers (3-1-2, 0-1-1 ACC) were staring at a 3-1 deficit against one of the top teams in the nation and had seemingly lost all momentum.
Virginia’s first goal, courtesy of redshirt senior forward Marcus Salandy-Defour, seemed like ages ago after the Tigers scored three straight goals before the end of the first half.
However, this didn’t prevent Virginia from losing belief in their game and its ability to respond in the second half. Virginia coach George Gelnovatch talked about how he thought Clemson (3-1-1, 0-1-1 ACC) was able to take advantage of mental lapses on the part of Virginia rather than being overmatched.
“To be honest with you, I don’t think their goals came from anything, but like, complete lapses from our standpoint,” Gelnovatch said. “We fell asleep on a corner kick and took a quick one. They weren’t buildups, where they’d pass us apart. They were literally mental lapses and I was actually a little bit dumbfounded we were losing 3-1.”
Salandy-Defour pointed out the Cavaliers never felt like they were out of the game. Virginia maintained its belief and was confident it would be able to respond in the second half.
“We never thought we were out of the game,” Salandy-Defour said. “We knew we were going to get chances to score, for sure.”
Virginia responded in a big way in the second half. The Cavalier offense picked it up and Virginia bounced back to score two goals to even up the score.
Salandy-Defour, who had a terrific game, scored his second goal of the match off of an assist from sophomore forward Edward Opoku to bring Virginia within one goal of Clemson.
With about 10 minutes left in regulation, Opoku was brought down and Virginia was awarded a penalty kick. Sophomore defender Sergi Nus converted the penalty kick to tie the game up at 3-3.
The Cavalier’s defense woke up in the second half and after allowing three goals in the first half, picked it up in the second half and shut out Clemson. Gelnovatch believes Virginia’s second half surge was aided by Clemson’s fatigue.
“I do think in the second half, they exerted a lot of energy in the first half, I mean a lot, Clemson did, and they rewarded themselves by scoring three goals,” Gelnovatch said. “I think in the second half it was all us because I think they were tired.”
Eventually, time ran out in regulation and the match went into overtime. However, neither team was able to score in both overtime periods and the game ended in a 3-3 tie. After being down 3-1 at the half, Gelnovatch liked the resiliency his team showed in the second half of the match.
“The thing for me, I love, that the second half is as good of a fight back as I’ve seen,” Gelnovatch said. “When you’re down in the conference, I don’t care where you are, 3-1, home, away or against as good of a team as Clemson, it generally is a disaster; our guys did a great job in the second half and we put ourselves in a position to win.”
Salandy-Defour echoed those sentiments, talking about how though Virginia was unable to pull out a victory, the team showed its resolve.
“Especially being a young team, to come back from 3-1 down against a good team like that, speaks volumes of our character and our strength,” Salandy-Defour said.
All in all, the Cavaliers couldn’t pick up their first conference win of the season. However, Gelnovatch said the team will learn a lot from the closely-fought match and that will help them in the future.
“We’re really disappointed to not win today, but there’s a lot of things we can learn with a young group of guys, that we can learn in terms of mental lapses that we’ll be better for down the road,” Gelnovatch said.
Virginia will now head on the road to continue conference play, as they get ready to take on Louisville this Saturday. The game will be in Louisville, Ky. and is scheduled for a 7 p.m. start.
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