Adelphi University Athletics

Garden City, N.Y. - Despite dominating time of possession and shot opportunities, the Adelphi University men's soccer team was forced to pull of a miraculous comeback to keep its NCAA Tournament alive on Saturday night.

Trailing since the 21st minute against the sixth-seeded Goldey-Beacom College Lightning, the champions of the Central Atlantic Collegiate Conference, Andre De Giorgi scored the game-tying goal in the 89th minute and Joseph Sanchez net the game-winner for the Brown and Gold in the 108th to cap a stunning double-overtime rally, and put the Panthers into the East Region final for the second straight year. 

With the victory, Adelphi advances to the third round of the NCAA Tournament, and will face top-seeded LIU Post for a regional crown for the second straight year.

The only difference will be site - last season, Adelphi headed down the road and won 4-0 on the Pioneers' home field en route to an appearance in the national quarterfinals.

Due to the alternating host site format in the championships, the Panthers and Pioneers will do battle this season over 500 miles away from their campuses, at Charleston (W. Va.), the top-seeded team out of the Atlantic Region. 

The Panthers kept the pressure on for the entirety of regulation, amassing a 28-4 margin in total shots over the first 90 minutes. Nonetheless, only six of those attempts were on goal, and it was the Lightning's Chahin Aghrim who gave the visiting team the lead as it bid for a second straight upset on Motamed Field. On Thursday night, the Lightning had defeated second-seeded Merrimack College by a 1-0 final. 

Mateus Silvestre chipped the ball ahead for the Lightning's junior midfielder, who worked his way around Raymond Leto after the Adelphi keeper had committed to come off his line, and tapped the ball into the lower left corner of the goal for the 1-0 lead. Suhail Bismilla did much of the work for the Lightning from there, as the visiting junior keeper stopped six shots over the course of regulation when Adelphi took a shot on target. 

De Giorgi had been held scoreless for over a month, with his last goal coming in a 4-1 win at Assumption on Oct. 5, but he broke out in a big way in the final minutes of regulation, taking a Federico De Oliveira cross hard towards net, to which Bismilla could only watch as it rocketed past him to tie the game, sending the Motamed Field faithful into a frenzy. 

With the game tied for nearly 20 more minutes, it looked as though it was destined for penalty kicks before Sanchez took matters into his own hands. Off a chipped pass from the back foot of De Giorgi in front of the goal, the senior rocketed a shot from the center of the top of the box, burying past Bismilla into the bottom left for the golden goal. 

The Panthers and Pioneers faced off in the first game of the 2017 season on Motamed Field, in which Adelphi led 3-2 in the 77th minute but eventually played to a 3-3 draw. Game date and time is still to be determined. 

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About Adelphi Athletics
Adelphi University joined the Northeast-10 Conference in the fall of 2009, and in the past eight seasons, has collected 25 regular season conference titles, 26 tournament championships, 33 individual crowns and captured the Northeast-10 Presidents' Cup four times (2013, 2014, 2016 and 2017), while winning six NCAA Division II National Championships.

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