Inside The Huskies

UW Men's Soccer Team Advances to College Cup in Search of National Title

Gino Miglietti, protective mask and all, scores twice in 2-0 victory over Saint Louis.

Dan Raley

Someone said the football season ended at the University of Washington.

No, not this football season.

On a brisk Saturday night before a record crowd in Montlake, forward Gino Miglietti scored a pair of first-half goals to propel the No. 1-ranked Husky men's soccer team past previously unbeaten Saint Louis 2-0 and into the College Cup, the sport's version of the Final Four. 

The UW men (17-1-2) will play in the national semifinals against Georgetown (18-2-1) on Friday night in Cary, North Carolina, while Clemson and Notre Dame meet in the other semi.

A trip to the College Cup marks a steady progression upward for a Husky program coached for the past decade by Jamie Clark, a one-time Stanford All-American and an Aberdeen, Scotland, native who grew up in the U.S.

"We've seized our moments and soccer is about capitalizing on those moments," Clark said.

A crowd of 3,629 lined the field, several hundred above capacity for this Montlake team. 

Wearing a protective mask to shield a broken nose, Miglietti, a junior from Hawthorne, California, and an All-Pac-12 honorable-mention selection, gave the Huskies all the scoring they needed by finding the net from short range off a deflection from teammate Nick Scardina, a sophomore from Portland.

Later, Miglietti took a feed from Christian Soto to put the Huskies ahead 2-0 over Saint Louis (16-1-4), which has been a 10-time national champion. The goals were his fifth and sixth of the season. Miglietti ranks second on the team in scoring, trailing only Dylan Teves, a junior from Kailua, Hawaii, who has 12 goals this season.

"We took the chance on stepping through," Miglietti said. "We've been working on that — being brave."

Goalkeeper Sam Fowler, a sophomore from Issaquah, Washington, was credited with the shutout.

These Huskies will attempt to become the eighth UW athletic team to claim a national championship, joining men's rowing (19), women's rowing (12), football (1), softball (1), volleyball (1), women's cross country (1) and women's golf (1). 

The school's most recent national title came from the UW women's golf team in 2016.

Clark's Huskies this season have lost only to then No. 8-ranked Oregon State 3-2 on Oct. 22 at home. They tied the Beavers 1-1 in Corvallis and Stanford 0-0 in Palo Alto, California.

They've won five games in overtime or double overtime, and beaten four ranked teams.

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Dan Raley
DAN RALEY

Dan Raley has worked for the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, Atlanta Journal-Constitution and Fairbanks Daily News-Miner, as well as for MSN.com and Boeing, the latter as a global aerospace writer. His sportswriting career spans four decades and he's covered University of Washington football and basketball during much of that time. In a working capacity, he's been to the Super Bowl, the NBA Finals, the MLB playoffs, the Masters, the U.S. Open, the PGA Championship and countless Final Fours and bowl games.

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