Chopin, Clan knocked out in NCAA Championship semi final
By The Nelson Daily Sports
The wonderful season for Kaslo’s Jules Chopin and the Simon Fraser Unversity Clan went out in Georgia as Carson Newman Eagles scored a 3-2 victory in the semi-final match at the NCAA Championship Tournament in Evans, Georgia.
It was the second consecutive season SFU has lost in the NCAA Championship tournament semi final.
“We weren’t good enough,” Clan head coach Alan Koch said on the SFU website.
“At halftime I told them that the game wasn’t over and that you have to play the full 90 minutes to win the game. We took our foot off the pedal after we scored. We had ample opportunity once we went up one nothing and could have gone up two, three, four nothing and the game would have been over at that stage, however we didn’t and that is the sport that we play. We allowed them back in it, they out worked us tonight, so I take my hat off to them for that.”
The game was tied 2-2 in the dying minutes of the game, with overtime looming, when Carson Newman scored to make it 3-2 with just over a minute remaining as Joao Pedro Dowsley took a through ball and beat Clan keeper, Brandon Watson of Victoria, with a shot off his left foot
Jovan Blaglo had given SFU a 1-0 lead.
But three second half goals by Carson Newman sealed the deal.
Juan Sanchez scored the other goal for SFU.
“It’s a game of opportunities and a game of mistakes and I didn’t think we took the opportunity tonight,” Koch explained.
“They are a great team and they deserve to be in the final. They didn’t take us by surprise at all because when you get to the Final Four, every team is a good team. They were a good team. They deserve to be in the final. They were better than us tonight. I think we need to give ourselves a bit of a head shake because this is the second year in a row we have come to the Final Four and been out-worked and there is no excuse for that.”
Chopin, a grad of the Nelson Youth Soccer, got into the game for 16 minutes as a substitute. The six-foot sophomore finished the game with no shots.
The loss ends the Clan season after SFU captured their second consecutive conference NCAA West Region Championship and fourth straight Great Northwest Athletic Conference crown.
