Crusaders show Grit in Draw on the Road at St. Thomas
HOUSTON – The University of Dallas men's soccer team finished with a 2-2 draw at University of St. Thomas on Sunday afternoon. It was a back-and-forth match that had 26 combined fouls, 13-per-team and seven cards issued. This included four on Dallas with a red card forcing the guests to play down a man the last 20 minutes of regulation and overtime.
The Crusaders were down a goal at that juncture, but Chase Reynolds (Southlake, Texas) converted on a penalty kick at the 79:58 minute mark and the UD defense withstood seven St. Thomas shots the rest of the way to earn a point in the Southern Collegiate Athletic Conference (SCAC) standings with the tie.
Reynolds did the damage for Dallas offensively with both goals scored. His first lifted his squad to a 1-0 advantage. It was his second on the campaign.
Tom Hultsch netted the equalizer in the 34th minute on an assist from Kelvin Cardona. This knotted things at 1-all at halftime, but the Celts held a 6-2 edge in shots and 3-0 edge in corner kicks. The second half favored UST more in the shots column, 12-4, and overall the home team held a 21-8 edge. The shots on goal difference was 9-4 favoring the Celts, and they also had an 8-2 edge in corner kicks.
Goncalo Pernas (Lisbon, Portugal) made his fourth start in goal, but came out after 56:11 minutes. He had snagged three saves.
About eight minutes after Pernas exited, Jose Umana hit his first goal to put St. Thomas in front 2-1.
Seeing his first action of the season, Caleb Strange (Argyle, Texas) held things down the remaining 53:49 minutes and notched four saves. He was part of the five-save effort by UD in the second stanza.
The first card of the match came out in the 64th minute, and four would occur less than 10 minutes later and six had been issued by the final horn in the half. UD had eight fouls in the second half compared to two in the first, first overtime, and one in double overtime.
Dallas played in its second double overtime match of the season, the other was a 1-0 victory at home versus Schreiner University. Reynolds, who claimed his third multi-scoring game of his career, tried to get the hat trick and golden goal in the 92nd minute but his attempt ended up as one-of-two saves by the Celts' goalkeeper Rodrigo Lazo. Carlo Scarmardo (Copper Canyon, Texas) had the other UD shot and that was followed by an offside called. St. Thomas had the last three shots overall, which included a shot on target in the last minute that was saved bottom center by Strange.
Both teams were in their second overtime games this season, as Dallas moved to 1-2-1 in SCAC, while the Celts are 1-1-2 overall and 1-1-1 in conference. The other tie for UST was a scoreless game against NCAA Division I Houston Baptist University.
The Crusaders are 1-1-1 in three matchups with St. Thomas since the program joined the SCAC in 2019. Dallas has earned its three points at St. Thomas over two matches there.
"This was a challenging match and a hard earned point," Head Coach David Hoffmann stated. "Traveling the day of a match, and losing a man against a quality opponent like UST would have made it easy to drop the game. We really had to work the bench and shuffle around players. We used two goalkeepers, six different CBs, five different CMs, four different wings, and five different CAMs."
"Chase will get noticed for his two goals, but his younger brother Kyle Reynolds deserves a massive amount of credit for holding us together in midfield. I don't see us being able to draw that game without Kyle stepping up."
Dallas returns home for its only home match this month with a game versus Trinity University. The match was moved to Friday, Mar. 19 and will begin at 1 p.m.