Oct. 20, 2007

Final Stats

Slippery Rock, Pa. - Visiting West Chester scored three second-half goals Saturday afternoon to overcome a 2-0 halftime deficit and record a 3-2 win over The Rock that deprived SRU a chance to lock up a berth in the Pennsylvania State Athletic Conference playoffs.

The Rock (9-6-2 overall, 8-4-2 PSAC) will now need to win on the road -- Wednesday at Lock Haven and/or next Saturday at Millersville -- to be one of four teams competing in the playoffs.

And that figures to be a tough challenge.

Lock Haven, with a win Saturday over Bloomsburg, took over second place in the PSAC standings with 30 points. Millersville, meanwhile, improved its points total to 28 and assumed third place with its win over California.

The Rock, with 26 points following its loss to West Chester, dropped into fourth place. West Chester is two points back in fifth place.

A Rock win at Lock Haven or Millersville assures the Green and White of a playoff berth for the third straight season.

Barring that, The Rock must hope West Chester loses both of its final two games (Wednesday at conference-leading East Stroudsburg, next Saturday vs. Bloomsburg).

For 56-plus minutes Saturday, The Rock was in position to collect a ticket to postseason play, but those plans were quickly ruined.

Adding insult to injury was the fact that the game-winning goal was an "own goal" credited to West Chester when the ball bounced off a Rock defender and past SRU goalie Greg Blum.

Jeremy Deighton, off an assist from Mitchell Walters, gave SRU a 1-0 lead with a goal in the 36th minute of action.

Deighton then assisted on a 57th-minute tally by Iain Langstone that put SRU up 2-0.

Less than a minute later, though, West Chester trimmed the margin to one goal and, 22 minutes after that, evened the score at 2-2.

The game-winning tally was recorded in the 85th minute of action.

Final statistics showed The Rock held a 15-13 edge in shots on goal. Each team had six shots on goal.

Rock starting goalie Chris Cook was not called upon to make a save in the first half of action as West Chester failed to get a shot on goal.

Blum replaced Cook in goal at the start of the second half and allowed three of five shots on goal to get past him in the final 45 minutes of action.