VANCOUVER – The UBC Thunderbirds moved into the Canada West Men's Soccer championship game with a well-deserved and workmanlike 3-0 semi-final victory over Alberta Golden Bears at Thunderbird Stadium on Saturday afternoon.
Victory Shumbusho and
Nick Fussell were the Thunderbirds goalscoring heroes, with the Thunderbirds leading scorer taking his tally for the season to 16 with a brace.
"It was one of those games that you felt it would come, as they didn't play out all that much," UBC head coach
Mike Mosher said after the match. "We made it difficult for them and we say all the time that sometimes you just have to grind teams down and as the game opens up our quality can shine through. And that was certainly the case today.
"They're not the easiest team to play against. You get a lot of long balls and knock downs, but we were ready for it. It was good – workmanlike is a good term for it in that first half."
The first half started off a bit cagey with both sides feeling each other out in the opening minutes.
UBC started to get a foothold and had the first real chance of the match from a Markus Kaiser shot that was well held by Alberta keeper Chris Ezoua.
Alberta had their first shot of the game just past the half hour mark when Habib Assem pounced on a
Thomas Gardner giveaway and fired a shot in from the edge of the box that was well dealt with by UBC goalkeeper Peter Whyte.
The Thunderbirds got the breakthrough in the 39th minute and it was their talismanic marksman Shumbusho that got it, capitalising on an Alberta mistake to power into the box and fire past Ezoua.
Alberta came out in a far more attacking mindset to start the second half and took the game to their hosts, but weren't able to find an equaliser.
"I think they have a very experienced side," said Alberta head coach Martin Fenger-Andersen. "A lot of great players on that team that took advantage of our mistakes, they have really top players up front who can take advantage of those opportunities and they did. Every time we opened up they were able to go in and finish it off."
The Thunderbirds started to regain a foothold in the match and they got their crucial second in the 62nd minute with a great team goal that saw UBC move the ball around quickly, switching sides and ending when
Mihai Hodut played a perfect ball inside to Fussell, who finished with aplomb from 14 yards out.
UBC nearly made it three six minutes later when Shumbusho was played in and tried to round the keeper, but Ezoua did a great job in cutting down the angle and getting a hand on the ball to knock away the danger.
The Thunderbirds had a couple of opportunities to put the game to bed but they had to wait till four minutes from time to do so, when substitute Tristan Nkoghe played a neat pass inside to Shumbusho, who did the rest to put a third past Ezoua.
Alberta pushed to the end and David Chung had a low long ranger just whizz past the left post in the closing minutes, but it was a comfortable UBC win in the end.
The Golden Bears' loss sets up an all-Alberta bronze medal match with the Mount Royal Cougars on Sunday morning.
"I'm really proud of my guys," added Fenger-Andersen when asked to encapsulate his team's progression and battle level ahead of playing in the Canada West Bronze medal game on Sunday. "This is their first final four for many of them, we faced a very experienced team today that played very well and they deserved to beat us but we've got to learn from that and come back tomorrow, it's a provincial rivalry game tomorrow. We've drawn Mount Royal University twice this season so now it's time to come out on top against them."
UBC will now chase their 22nd Canada West men's championship on home turf Sunday when they take on the Calgary Dinos, with a place at next week's U SPORTS nationals also on the line. Perhaps not the opponent UBC may have expected, but they know they'll be in for a battle none the less.
"It's a final and finals are never easy," Mosher mused. "They'll be up for it. They defended very well today against a very good MRU side. They'll be up for it and looking to do a bit of the same tomorrow. We'll take nothing for granted."
Kickoff for the Canada West bronze is set for 11:00 a.m. PT at Thunderbird Stadium with UBC taking on Calgary for conference supremacy – and a fifth straight CW banner – at 1:30 p.m. PT. Both games will be streamed live on
Canada West TV.
