Huskies Swing and Miss in NCAA Soccer Title Game
Twenty-six seconds.
Not even half a minute.
A blink of the eye, really — leading to a whiff of the foot.
After working so hard to reach the NCAA national championship game, the University of Washington men's soccer team couldn't recover from an early blunder and went on to lose to the Clemson Tigers 2-0 on Sunday in Cary, North Carolina.
Husky goalkeeper Sam Fowler swung his foot and inexplicably missed as he tried to clear a shot, leaving an uncontested opportunity for the Tigers' Isaiah Reid, who calmly booted one into an empty net from the left side.
The clock said 44:34.
The second-seeded Huskies (18-2-2) couldn't respond in their first championship game appearance.
Clemson took advantage to earn its third title, its first since winning in 1984 in Seattle and 1987 in San Diego.
For Fowler, a sophomore from Issaquah, Washington, his early flub was unlike him, normally a highly reliable keeper. He was a second-team All-Pac-12 selection. But it happened just the same.
The miscue nonetheless was all the eighth-seeded ACC team from South Carolina (17-5-1) needed to win this one. It added another first-half goal on a header from Reid, a 5-foot-10 junior forward from Rock Hill, South Carolina.
That score didn't take place until 15 minutes were played.
To be on the losing end was a rare moment for this UW soccer team this season.
It hadn't happened in 50 days.
The Huskies' only other setback this season came when they were 12-0, ranked No. 1 and lost to eighth-ranked Oregon State 3-2 on October 22 in Seattle. They went down in the 88th minute on Mouhameth Thiam's penalty kick.
To reach the College Cup, Clemson faced those same Beavers in Corvallis, Oregon, and ousted them 4-3 on penalty kicks in the regional final in a match that had ended 1-1.
The Tigers were aggressor against the UW from the outset, pushing the action and keeping the ball in the Husky end for much of the game.
Jamie Clark's team didn't take its first shot on goal until 17:25 was left in the opening half. The Huskies had their best opportunities to score twice inside the final 6 minutes but Clemson keeper George Marks made clutch saves each time.
Averaging 2.3 goals per match coming in, the UW was shut out for only the second time this season, the other blanking coming in a 0-0 tie with Stanford.
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