The No. 1 seeded Berkeley College New York men's soccer team advanced to the finals of the 2019 Hudson Valley Intercollegiate Athletic Conference Tournament on Saturday afternoon, defeating the Sound of Five Towns College by a score of 13-0 in the semifinals. The match took place on the campus of Albany College of Pharmacy.
With the victory, the Knights improved to a mark of 11-6-1 on the season, and advanced to the HVIAC title match for the seventh time in history. Berkeley will look to solidify its fourth conference crown tomorrow against No. 2 seeded SUNY-ESF (3:00pm start). As for Five Towns College, the Sound dropped to 9-4-1 overall with the loss, and will now await word on a possible longshot USCAA Division II National Tournament bid
Berkeley College came out extremely aggressive in this match from the start, peppering six shots towards the net (five of them 0n-goal) before finally breaking through for the first score of the contest. At 18:56, veteran speedster Jean-Gardy Derineau collected the ball and raced past the defense to find himself on a breakaway. He then blasted a ball inside the left post, past Sound netminder Mouhamed Diop Dia, to give his team a 1-0 advantage. The midfielder from Valley Stream, NY struck again shortly thereafter, netting another unassisted goal to catapult the Knights to a 2-0 edge (at 24:47).
With a little over 15 remaining in the opening session, HVIAC and USCAA leading scorer Amadou Sy contributed his first postseason goal of 2019, pushing Berkeley's commanding advantage to 3-0 (29:37). 3:38 later, Tcharly Verna increased the Knights lead to 4-0, taking advantage of a beautiful pass off the foot of Sy to bury a ball into the net (33:15). Berkeley continued to cushion its lead, as Carlos Veliz would join the party with a goal (at 39:33, from Sy) to make it 5-0 Knights. The final goal of the opening session came at 43:25, when Sy would capitalize off of a great lead pass by Veliz before tapping the ball into the goal to push the score to 6-0 Berkeley.
The Knights dominated the first half of action, out-shooting the Sound by a count of 14-4. 42.8 percent of the shots that Berkeley College took in the opening 45 minutes ended up in the net.
Berkeley continued to light up the scoreboard in the second half, as Sy netted his third and fourth goals of the match at 52:45 and 54:13, respectively. Marcos Leon assisted on the first of those aforementioned tallies, with defender Benjamin Elvenes picking up an assisted on the latter of the two goals. Those two scores made it 8-0 Knights.
Incredibly, Sy would notch his fifth goal of the afternoon, collecting a pass from Alex Moore before depositing the ball into the net to make it 9-0 Berkeley. 3:06 later, an unassisted goal by Jonathan Russell gave the Knights a double-digit lead at 10-0. It was their first double digit lead in a match since defeating Culinary two weeks ago today by a 14-0 score. Later, at 72:06, it was Sy again, incredibly netting his sixth goal of the day, this time from veteran Meshema Charles. At that point of the match, Berkeley held an 11-0 edge.
In the 78th minute (77:23), Charles would give the Knights a dozen goals on the day, as he blasted one into the back of the net (from Derineau) to put Berkeley ahead 12-0. Moore's 84th minute goal (83:41, from Russell) gave the Knights a 13-0 lead. That would be the final goal scored on the afternoon.
The Knights held a 31-10 edge in the shots category. Berkeley earned 11 corner kick opportunities compared to two for the opposition.
Berkeley netminder Dario Cruz-Sepulveda made two saves and didn't allow a goal in 77:23 of game action. Yusuf Figueroa finished things out in net, stopping one shot and not yielding a score in 12:37 of work.