VANCOUVER – The undefeated UBC Thunderbirds men's soccer team jumped to an early lead on Saturday night against the Fraser Valley Cascades and never looked back, taking the game by a score of 3-0.
Richard Meister (Port Moody, BC) recorded the shutout for UBC.
Midfielder
Milad Mehrabi (Coquitlam, BC) was on form tonight, scoring both first half goals for the Thunderbirds, his third and fourth of the season. He got ahead of a lob pass from
Harry Lakhan (Surrey, BC) in the 15th minute and lightly chipped the ball over UFV keeper Mark Village's (Abbotsford, BC) outstretched arms. Mehrabi followed up with another goal in the 29th, slotting the ball past Village on the right side.
The Thunderbirds kept control of the game in the second half.
Brandon Ho (Vancouver, BC) took a through ball from Gagandeep Dosanjh (Abbotsford, BC) and finished from 15 yards out to put the game out of reach for the Cascades. “It was great to see Brandon go (off the bench) and be the guy to kill the game off,” said head coach
Mike Mosher of his midfielder. It was Ho's second game of the season and he got his first goal only a few minutes after being subbed in for Lakhan.
While UBC dominated the ball most of the game, UFV certainly put up a fight, and the teams had a couple feisty interactions between players. By the end of the game, the referee had given out four yellow cards. Playing under cold and wet conditions, several players from both sides went down. With the playoffs only two weeks away, injury prevention is paramount. “It's later in the season and you start to pick up little knocks and bangs, but we want to try to be as healthy as we can and firing on all cylinders as we go through the next few weeks,” said Mosher.
Next weekend, UBC will play two critical games against rivals Trinity Western University, with each team hosting the other on back to back nights. The results of these final regular season games will decide the winner of the Canada West Pacific Division, and thus have an impact on playoff match ups. Both teams defeated UVIC and UFV this weekend, so UBC maintains a five point lead over Trinity in the conference standings. With this point differential , UBC needs just one point out of an available six, so a tie in one of these games against Trinity is all they need to clinch first place. However, they have a chance to accomplish an impressive feat if they can stay undefeated, and would like to keep as much momentum as possible before heading out on the road for the playoffs.
“They're a good team, they're well organized, they're well coached. It'll be an interesting final weekend,” Mosher commented on Trinity. “They've got to come and beat us twice to be first. They've got a good team, so we've got to get a good week of training and be ready. They'll look to throw everything at us,” said Mosher. But, he added, “For us, it's worry about ourselves first and if we can do what we're capable of we've got a good team.”
UBC have put themselves in a good position and will look to take care of business on the road Friday night in Langley so that they can come home to a finale at Thunderbird Stadium on Saturday having already locked up first place. Both games will kick off at 7 p.m.
-30-
