With five minutes and thirteen seconds remaining in the second half, the top-seeded North Carolina men’s soccer team was almost certain it was headed back to Chapel Hill with a loss to UCLA in the College Cup semifinal round.
But then redshirt junior Billy Schuler stepped into the picture.
In the 87th minute, Schuler – UNC’s leading goal scorer – chipped in an Enzo Martinez shot that had failed to cross the goal line, and simultaneously sent the Tar Heels into their ninth overtime game this season.
“You’re looking at the clock and you see the time going down and it just keeps running through your head,” Schuler said. “You’ve got to find it. I don’t think we ever stopped thinking that we wouldn’t find the equalizer, but it starts settling in. Ten minutes left, eight minutes left, and then down to five minutes.”
North Carolina held UCLA to two scoreless overtime periods before the Tar Heels were able to advance to Sunday’s national title game on penalty kicks, outshooting the Bruins 3-1 on goals by Kirk Urso, Drew McKinney and Ben Speas. But none of that would have been possible without Schuler’s goal to end regulation deadlocked at two goals apiece.
“Enzo had a rip, and I think he was celebrating before he even saw it go in,” Schuler said. “But luckily I was following the play and was able to put the rebound in. We knew we had to do something quick, and luckily we found the equalizer.”
North Carolina coach Carlos Somoano was confident in his team’s ability to execute the fundamentals, even when the Tar Heels were trailing UCLA and were face-to-face with their fourth straight College Cup elimination.
“Our objective is to have kind of a flow in our game,” Somoano said. “We try to establish rhythm and momentum going forward. We don’t always do that. We have some games where it’s not working out as we hoped, but we don’t stray from our objectives, even when things aren’t going at the standard or level of what we want attacking-wise, we stay focused on what we want to do. We keep trying and get back into rhythm and that makes us a very strong attacking team.”
UCLA goalkeeper Brian Rowe – a second-team All-American – made nine saves in 110 minutes of play, but when the second overtime period came to a close, the Tar Heels owned the penalty kicks, making two straight and never looking back.
