Box Score Men's College Soccer
Rider University 2, Quinnipiac University 0
LAWRENCEVILLE, NJ—The Broncs defeated the 2014 regular season champion Saturday afternoon in a Metro Atlantic Athletic Conference game in the 2015 regular season finale. “It went well today,” said Rider head coach Charlie Inverso. “I was proud of the way our guys responded today. They got the job done.”
With the win Rider (11-5-1, 6-3-1 MAAC) will be the second seed and not only will receive a first round bye but will play a team in the quarterfinals that has already played a first round game. “We are disappointed that we did not win the regular season,” Inverso said. “We thought we had the team that could do that. But when I first started here I was almost in awe of the teams who were in the top three. Now we are there two years in a row.”
Rider enters the tournament 6-1-1 in its last eight games.
The 11 wins is the most for Rider since finishing the 1998 season in the NCAA tournament with 13 wins. “That feels good,” Inverso said.
The official pairings for the MAAC Championship Tournament, held November 5-8 at ESPN's Wide World of Sports in Orlando, will be announced Sunday.
The Broncs got on the board just before half time when junior Adrien Huss (Madrid, Spain) took a direct kick and sophomore Matt Crust (Redcar and Cleveland, England/Ohio State) got his head on it for his first goal in the 44th minute of play.
“It was a good ball from Adrien,” said Crust, who came to Rider from England by way of Ohio State. “I just managed to get a flick of my head on it and luckily it went into the back of the net. I was happy about that. I really wanted to get one before the end of the season.”
“Crusty is a workman-like guy,” Inverso said. “We were delighted to have him this year. That might have been his first goal but he can score goals. He has shown that in the scrimmages and in training. The goal he scored today was huge.”
The Broncs scored the insurance goal with 13:23 remaining when, on Senior Day, senior Florian Valot (Monaco, France) scored his sixth goal of the season.
Rider out-shot Quinnipiac (1-10-6, 1-5-4 MAAC) 15-5, including 4-3 in shots on goal. “Quinnipiac has to be the best one-win team in college soccer,” Inverso said of the Bobcats. “They took on a very tough non-conference schedule this year. We knew we were in for a tough game today.”
Rider senior Ryan Baird (Plainfield, NJ/St. Peter's Prep) made three saves for the shutout, his fourth. Baird improved to 8-2 in the Rider net.
Quinnipiac won the first two meetings with Rider, 1-0 in double overtime in 2013 and 2-1 last year.
Rider will now play November 6 in the MAAC quarterfinals at Disney World. “I've never been to Disney World before,” Curst said. “It is going to be a good experience.”
“We feel good about ourselves going down there,” Inverso said. “We still have a few starters who could not play today due to injuries but all indications are we will have them back for the tournament.”
This is Rider's 10th MAAC Championship Tournament in the 19 years in the conference. “We're ready to go,” Inverso said.
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