Box score
FARMVILLE, VA—Atlantic Soccer Conference regular season champion Adelphi defeated NJIT, 3-0, Friday afternoon in the first semifinal game of the ASC championship tournament hosted by Longwood.
Adelphi, ranked third in the final regular season regional coaches' poll, will play in Sunday's championship match against host and defending champion Longwood, a 3-2 winner over Houston Baptist in Friday's other semifinal.
The Panthers (12-2-4), who defeated the Highlanders, 3-1, in NJIT's regular season home finale on October 30, took control of Friday's playoff game with a pair of first-half goals and then added another tally in the second half.
Issa Tall, the ASC Player of the Year, opened the scoring with an unassisted goal in the sixth minute, and Kevin Gluchowski provided the insurance on a header in the 38th minute and then Adelphi's second-half goal on a 35-yarder at 72:12.
Tall's goal came on his team's first shot of the match. The freshman, who was the unanimous selection as ASC Player of the Year by the conference coaches, is second nationally in goals per game and now has 15 in 17 games. Tall has accounted for 15 of his team's 33 goals on the season.
Gluchowski, a second-team all-ASC pick as a defender, scored his first two goals of the season in Friday's win against NJIT.
The victorious Panthers got a combined shutout. All-conference first-team keeper Thorne Holder started and played 18:56 before departing with an injury. He was not tested before he left. Backup Kyle Blackmer replaced Holder and completed the shutout with three saves.
NJIT goalkeeper Ryan Sutherland, playing his final college game for the Highlanders, played all 90 minutes and made four saves.
Adelphi outshot NJIT, 12-7 overall and 7-3 in shots on goal. The shots on goal for the Highlanders were provided by departing seniors Osvaldo Perez and Erik Magnusson, along with freshman Franco Gamero.
NJIT finished the season with a 5-14-1 overall record. The five wins were the most in a season for the Highlanders since they began playing a Division I schedule in 2004.
They also had an extraordinary number of close games, including a remarkable seven defeats by identical scores of 2-1, plus a 1-0 loss, meaning more than half the losses were one-goal games. One of those 2-1 losses came against Monmouth, which ranks eighth in the final NSCAA national coaches' poll. NJIT led that game with 15 minutes left.
The 2009 season ended in a similar fashion to the close of NJIT's 2008 season. A year ago, the Highlanders opened the ASC tournament with a 3-1 over Howard and moved on to the semis, where they lost to Adelphi, 3-0. This year, NJIT opened the tournament with a 3-0 win over Howard before losing the semifinal match to Adelphi by the same score.
