With a postseason appearance on the line, the Binghamton women’s soccer team delivered Sunday afternoon, beating UMBC, 1-0, in 103 minutes to earn its second consecutive double-overtime victory.
The deciding goal for Binghamton (7-9-2, 3-3-2 America East) came off the foot of freshman forward Patricia Hanley. A feed from junior forward Katie Corcoran set Hanley up to launch a shot from the left wing into the top-right corner of the net, consolidating the Bearcats’ postseason appearance and costing the Retrievers (12-4-2, 4-2-2 AE) the top seed heading into the conference tournament.
“[Hanley] made the run on a perfect angle to beat her man,” Binghamton head coach Sarah McClellan said. “It was a huge play for Tricia. Great composure by her to come in and make an impact like that.”
The Bearcats entered Sunday’s match tied with Stony Brook in contending for the sixth and last seed of the AE tournament, though the Seawolves (5-10-2, 2-4-2 AE) held an advantage over the Bearcats, in that they would have advanced in case of a tiebreaker. But shortly after Binghamton’s victory, Stony Brook fell to New Hampshire, propelling the Bearcats to their second straight playoff appearance.
“I think we worked really hard to achieve our record of 3-3-2,” McClellan said. “Everything that we’ve done throughout this season got us this opportunity. Everyone’s excited to keep going forward.”
The team showcased its resilience through its most recent victory. Despite being outshot through regulation, 13-10, the Bearcats found a way to stay in the game and clinch the win late, even pulling ahead to record a 15-14 advantage by the end of the game. Keeping the team composed was very important to McClellan, and she did just that in two must-win games to close out the season.
“That’s what our team has worked for,” McClellan said. “I think that it shows that each of our players and the unit of our team are able to stay calm under pressure, man together and work hard for each other.”
Now entering the postseason with as good a chance of moving on as any other team, McClellan expressed how important it was to simply get to this point.
“The most important thing when you’re in season is to get yourself through the season and put yourself into a situation to be able to start over,” McClellan said. “That’s kind of what playoffs are: to start over. So we’ll give it our best shot.”
The sixth-seeded Bearcats are now set to take on third-seeded New Hampshire (7-8-2, 4-2-2 AE) in the first round of the quarterfinals on Thursday in Durham. Having already faced UNH this season and having fallen, 1-0, at home on Oct. 19, BU will use information from that game to prepare for its first-round matchup.
“I think we’ll take a look at the game that we played against them last week,” McClellan said. “It was not a very good game for us, so we’re going to have to identify a couple of pieces that we need to clean up in our matchup against them. Any of these conference opponents are going to be tight games. We’ll just have to get ready to be our best on Thursday.”
Kickoff is set for 7 p.m Thursday at Bremner Field in Durham, N.H.