North Carolina downs Coastal Carolina men’s soccer team in NCAA second round

It was no secret that the biggest obstacle for the Coastal Carolina men’s soccer team this postseason would be finding enough offense to compete with the top teams in the country.

And when No. 5-seeded North Carolina went up two goals in the waning minutes Sunday night in the second round of the NCAA tournament, it was hard to imagine the Chanticleers finding a way to keep their season going.

To their credit, the Chants actually did make those final few minutes plenty interesting while scoring one goal and pressuring for another, but time ran out on their comeback bid as the host Tar Heels eventually closed out a 2-1 win at Fetzer Field.

With that, Coastal Carolina ends its season with a 13-3-4 record.

“Great teams play for 90 minutes and good teams play for 80 minutes, and that’s what hurt us,” junior midfielder Sergio Camargo said. “We started playing after 10 minutes after they scored. No one is going to say either team outplayed the other team, it was a close game, but they just got the first goal.”

Indeed, North Carolina (15-1-3) struck quickly Sunday night, scoring 1 minute, 54 seconds into the game as Tucker Hume converted on a cross from David October.

Hume’s goal was his ACC-leading 11th of the season, and he later picked up an assist on what would prove to be the decisive score. Hume set up Zach Wright for a one-on-one opportunity with Coastal Carolina junior goalkeeper Fernando Pina and Wright deposited it in the net to make it a 2-0 game with 5:17 left to play.

It wasn’t over just yet, though.

Senior forward Tobenna Uzo scored for the Chants with 2:39 remaining, on a rebound off an initial shot by Camargo to cut the deficit in half.

And Camargo had a free kick opportunity just outside the 18-yard box with 1:54 on the clock, but his shot sailed just a little high and over the crossbar.

“I had a chance at the end, the guys believed in me, I thought I was confident enough to take it and I just couldn’t put it in the back of the net,” Camargo said.

Said Uzo: “[The confidence] was high. Most of the second half, most of the first half it was always high. I feel like we were at their necks. Like coach said, it’s all about taking [advantage of] chances. We had chances and if we could score one of them, it’s a whole new ballgame. It’s just disappointing that we couldn’t find that second goal.”

North Carolina played most of the game with its backup goalkeeper as starter James Pyle left with a head injury after playing the first 35 minutes, giving way to Sam Euler to close out the game.

Overall, the Tar Heels held a 16-11 advantage in shots, but the Chants actually led 8-6 in that category in the second half while keeping the pressure on the ACC regular-season champions.

“I was pleased with the performance. I thought after giving up the early goal we settled into the game better, and I thought from then on we were good,” Chants coach Shaun Docking said. “... We got to the last 12 minutes and we had to chase the game a little bit and we left ourselves open in the back, they got the second goal and then I thought we did a great job of getting that last goal and could have easily tied the game and gone into overtime.”

Coastal Carolina simply hasn’t been the same team since losing leading scorer Bryce Follensbee a few weeks ago, though. Without him in the lineup, the Chants had managed just two goals in their previous five games and couldn’t find enough offense to build on their terrific first half of the season when they climbed as high as No. 4 in the national rankings.

“We had our ups and downs, started very well, slowed down, took our foot off the pedal for a bit and that hurt us a lot in the RPI and the rankings,” Camargo said. “But I think this game, out of the last month this game is the game we want to go out on because I think we played the best in this game.”

This marked the Chants’ sixth-straight NCAA tournament appearance and fifth-straight year advancing to the second round after they edged North Florida 1-0 in the opening round on Thursday.

Overall, it was another strong season for a program that has established itself as a perennial fixture in the national rankings and in the postseason.

“I think it’s huge for the program. We’re very fortunate to be able to get to the second round every year for the last [five] years,” Docking said. “I think for our program it’s a very important benchmark we’ve accomplished, so I’m really pleased with that. I think the challenge now for us is to see if we can push that even further.

“We’ve gone to four final-16s in the history of the program so I would love to see if we can get to a point in the next couple of years where we can get to an Elight Eight or a College Cup. I think that’s the goal for all of us. We’re not just happing getting to the NCAA tournament, although we’re very grateful and pleased that we are because it’s a very, very difficult thing to do.”

This story was originally published November 22, 2015 at 9:45 PM with the headline "North Carolina downs Coastal Carolina men’s soccer team in NCAA second round."