A week after stumbling at unranked Old Dominion, the No. 4 North Carolina men’s soccer team once again looked susceptible to a nonconference upset 26 minutes into Tuesday night’s home game against Radford.
But with its attack sputtering, UNC (7-2, 4-0 ACC) found strength in its underclassmen, who helped erase a 1-0 first-half deficit and powered the Tar Heels to a 5-1 win.
“I’m excited about all of the young players we have because we have so many old players, but the young ones are just as good,” senior midfielder Stephen McCarthy said. “It’s amazing to see.”
Despite dominating possession from the opening whistle, the Tar Heels were unable to find a hole in the Radford defense in the absence of starting forward Alex Dixon, who missed the game with a hamstring injury. UNC was then put behind the eight-ball after the Highlanders’ Iyiola Awosika scored a breakaway goal off a counter-attack in the 26th minute.
Shortly after Radford (4-3-2) took the lead, UNC coach Elmar Bolowich turned to his bench to get his team back on equal footing. In the 12 minutes following the Radford goal, Bolowich made two substitutions, bringing in sophomores Martin Murphy and Jordan Gafa and freshmen Josh Rice and Bruno Castro.
A minute and a half after the second substitution, Bolowich had his equalizer.
Just more than a minute after entering the game, Murphy won the Tar Heels a corner kick on the left side. Senior midfielder Michael Farfan’s delivery was punched away by the Radford keeper, but the ball fell to the feet of UNC defender Eddie Ababio outside the box.
Ababio played the ball through the air to Rice, who was standing on the left side of the box, just six yards from the goal. Rice expertly controlled Ababio’s pass and smacked the ball across the face of the goal to Murphy, who one-timed the ball into the net for his first goal of the season.
“Fortunately we equalized before the half,” Bolowich said. “That was huge for us to go into halftime tied, and then we could regroup.”
