With a chance to host the Patriot League tournament hinging on Saturday's match at Lafayette, the AU Men's Soccer team could've overlooked Wednesday's nonconference clash with visiting Pennsylvania.
Perhaps that's what happened early. But trailing 1-0 at halftime, the once-groggy Eagles awoke, harased the Quakers throughout the rest of the match and won, 2-1, in overtime on senior forward David Marut's game-winning header.
Senior defender Nick Zaron assisted Marut's 98th-minute winner, rising above a mass of humanity to head sophomore Garth Juckem's left-sided corner kick back to the left post. Marut, who at 5 feet 10 inches is not known for his aerial power, sprang to reach the ball and nod it into an open net.
"When I headed it I hardly saw it go in," Marut said afterward. "I just heard a bunch of screaming. I am usually on the 'keeper on corners, and after the first touch I come off the 'keeper for a rebound. And that's exactly what happened."
The win puts AU at 11-5-2. The Eagles are still 5-1 in the PL and have won five of their last six. Pennsylvania, a top-25 team earlier in the year, has now lost five straight matches and sits at 6-7-2, 2-2-1 in the Ivy League.
Marut, who did not score this year until a clash with Holy Cross on Oct. 9, now has five goals in the past six matches, and may be turning into the finisher the Eagles have searched for all season. Yet he scored the winner only after missing a golden game-tying chance in regulation, pushing the ball wide left on a one-on-one chance against Pennsylvania 'keeper Daniel Cepero. Before Oct. 9, it may have been a blunder the speedster could not have outrun.
"You can't really dwell on it," Marut said. "If you let it sit in your head, it's going to haunt you again later on.
"Earlier in the season I had a lot going through my mind ... too much," he said. "What the coaches said to me was right. I needed to have fun again. I was worried about every touch, every shot and every pass."
Marut's first chance, coming in the 73rd minute, looked like it might be the Eagles' last gasp. To that point, Juckem, sophomore midfielder Cocoa Del Rio and senior midfielder Shawn Kuykendall all had second-half shots on goal from inside the penalty area thwarted by Cepero's solid goalkeeping. Cepero finished with 11 saves.
But Kuykendall, a playmaker by trade who has had to embrace a goal-scoring role this season, rescued the Eagles just six minutes from full time.
After carrying down the right wing, sophomore forward Salvatore Caccavale sprayed a cross to Kuykendall, who was eerily alone near the penalty spot. Kuykendall touched the ball to his right to elude one Quaker, and then blasted the ball past Cepero - who had little chance - and into the top right corner.
Kuykendall leads the Eagles in scoring with six goals and six assists from a central midfield role. While that production, at least in the goals category, is unprecedented in his collegiate career, AU head coach Todd West hasn't been surprised.
"I don't want to put too much pressure on him, but I expected maybe he could score 10 goals for us this year," West said. "Maybe he still will. He's no secret. That's why he's even a bigger deal. He's getting man-marked and still finding goals and quality chances."
The Quakers opened the scoring on a goal strikingly similar to Kuykendall's way back in the 24th minute. Defender Erik Violante started the move, darting down the right side of a lackadaisical AU defense.
After beating two or three Eagles, Violante drove a cross in from the corner past AU senior goalkeeper Thomas Myers and onto the foot of streaking midfielder Stephen Kroculick, who one-timed the ball into the net.
While the Eagles dominated both halves in terms of shots (10-3 in the first and 12-1 in the second) and possession, Kroculick's goal rewarded the Quakers for showing more bite than the Eagles did over the opening 45 minutes. In the second half and in overtime, the tables turned.
"I told them that the first half was a funeral, and the second half was a fiesta," West said.
The Eagles hope to keep the party going when they travel to Easton, Pa., on Saturday night. A win or a draw over Lafayette gives the Eagles the PL regular-season crown and designates them as hosts for the PL tournament on Nov. 12 and 14.
AU is the only PL team that has clinched a spot in the tournament.
