Box Score
 
NEWARK, NJ—Utah Valley stormed back from a 1-0 halftime deficit to score four second-half goals in a 4-1 win for the visiting Wolverines over NJIT in Great West Conference women's soccer midday Saturday on Lubetkin Field at Mal Simon Stadium.
 
Utah Valley, which had lost the first two games of its three-game swing to the East Coast (5-1 non-conference at Princeton on October 18 and a 2-1 upset in conference play at Delaware State two days later), scored three of its four goals against NJIT in a span over just over 10 minutes, from 57:18 to 67:43.
 
The Wolverines are 9-8-1 overall and 4-1 in the Great West Conference. Their Thursday loss at Delaware State was just their second ever in the Great West, which began play in 2009, and it was also Delaware State's first-ever conference win in the same span.
 
Saturday's defeat in a match that began at 11 am dropped NJIT to 1-3 in the Great West and 2-14 overall.
 
UVU's scoring leaders against NJIT were two of its 2011 scoring leaders--sophomore Natalie Young and senior Kaitlyn Thomas, each of whom finished the day with two goals and an assist.
 
Young, who scored the first two Wolverine goals, has nine on the season and her assist on the final goal was her sixth. Both totals top the team. Thomas now has six goals (tied for second on the team), while her assist on the first Utah Valley goal was her first assist of the year.
 
Regan Clifford assisted on the go-ahead goal for the Wolverines and Jaime Lyons helped out on the third goal, giving her five assists on the season, which is second on UVU behind Young's six.
 
NJIT, which had been shut out four times since beating Delaware State on October 7, got on the board first against Utah Valley, thanks to a goal by junior Gechi Ukaegbu, her second of the year, assisted by Mariam Bestawros (her second assist), at 24:49.
 
NJIT goalkeeper Anna Kornmuller finished with six saves, while sophomore Lauren Sack came off the bench at halftime to earn the win in goal for the Wolverines. She made three saves. The starter, freshman Jade Colebrook, allowed the lone Highlander goal and made three saves.
 
As with the goals, the shot totals reflected how the game played out. At the end of the close first half, NJIT held a slight 6-5 edge in total shots to go with the 1-0 lead on the scoreboard. In the second half, Utah Valley took 15 shots to five for the Highlanders, resulting in a game total of 20 shots for the winners to 11 for the Highlanders. Of UVU's 15 second-half shots, eight were on target and one hit the crossbar.
 
“It was a tale of two halves,” said NJIT coach Sergio Gonzalez. “I thought the first half was some of the best soccer we've played all year. We showed what we're capable of doing against a good team. The second half we were very, very flat and you could see it in the first five minutes, when we had four giveaways. The defense was not well organized and we abandoned a lot of what went well for us in the first half.”
 
Early on, Utah Valley had a great chance to score, perhaps its best opportunity of the opening half, in the sixth minute, when the NJIT keeper, Kornmuller, came far off her line to challenge a shot by Jaime Lyons. Kornmuller blocked the shot, but the rebound spun to Ashley Burdett, whose 10-yard try toward the open goal sailed a few inches over the crossbar.
 
Given that reprieve in the evenly-played first half, NJIT got on the board first with Ukaegbu's score in the 25th minute. The goal was set up on a chip pass into the middle of the box from Bestawros. Ukaegbu, staying on side, got a half-step on her defender and reached the ball first for a slow rolling shot that eased across the goal line inside the right post.
 
The 1-0 lead held up for the home team until the 50th minute, when the visitors equalized on a precise ground pass down the middle from Thomas to Young, who burst clear of her defender in the box and scored easily on an open shot from eight yards out.
 
The Wolverines surged into the lead at 57:18, when Clifford's long pass out of midfield found Young, who had slipped behind her defender. Young, with no one to beat aside from Kornmuller, fired a shot past the NJIT keeper from just inside the top of the penalty area.
 
The goal, which turned out to be all the Wolverines would need, began the onslaught that turned what had been a close contest into a comfortable win. The visitors added an insurance goal in the 62nd minute, when Lyons passed ahead to Thomas, who took advantage of a mixup in the middle of the NJIT defense to collect the pass and then finished to make it 3-1.
 
The Wolverines tacked on a fourth goal in the 68th minute, when Young took the ball into the right corner and crossed to Thomas, who finished, giving each of the duo two goals and an assist on the day.
 
NJIT will play its last two regular season games on the road, beginning with a conference match on Thursday at North Dakota in a 3 pm (CT) start. After an away game at GWC foe Houston Baptist on Saturday, the Highlanders will return home to host the Great West Conference Tournament from November 4 to 7.