The UBC Thunderbirds concluded their 2019 Canada West regular season schedule with a 3-0 shutout win against the UFV Cascades under rainy skies at Thunderbird Stadium on Sunday afternoon. With the victory, the T-Birds secured their eighth straight Pacific division title.
The hosts also honoured their five graduating seniors with a pre-game recognition for
Kerman Pannu,
Manraj Bains,
Jason Roberts,
Luke Griffin,
Sean Einarsson.
The Cascades came into action needing visitors a win to earn a playoff berth and they came in well-organized but were broken down in the 10
th minute by UBC rookie
Logan Chung, who played a great ball into the UFV area that found
Mackenzie Cole whose header was saved by keeper Ethan Duggan. The ball then fell to
Mihai Hodut but Duggan made another great save to keep it scoreless.
UBC would eventually find their breakthrough through a
Jordan Haynes free kick that was denied by Duggan that resulted in a T-Birds corner kick.
Sam Fletcher stepped up to take it and his curving delivery found its way in at the back post to open the scoring in the 21
st minute.
Six minutes later, another UBC corner this time taken by Haynes, dropped perfectly to the foot of Pannu who put it home from close range to give him a goal on his special day, fiving the hosts a 2-0 advantage in minute 26.
Shortly after half time, the 'Birds were awarded a free kick just outside the box.
Thomas Gardner stepped up and wonderfully placed a 22-yard strike into the top corner to the right of Duggan for UBC's third of the afternoon.
UFV kept battling and shortly thereafter leading scorer Gurman Jhaj created some space for himself in the 60
th minute and let one go from distance that just rolled wide of
Jason Roberts' goal. Another opportunity for Jhaj came eight minutes later as a corner flew into the UBC box that went just past the gloves of Roberts and onto the head of Jhaj, who put it just wide.
"It was a good bounce back game (from Friday)," said UBC head coach
Mike Mosher post-match. "Jason didn't have a whole lot to do in net for us today, and that was our plan, getting back to a clean sheet. Every situation along the way can be different and following Friday we wanted to have a good performance today and not have back to back losses going into the playoffs."
The loss eliminated the Cascades from playoff contention, meanwhile UBC host Alberta next Friday in their playoff opener.
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