Young’s goals give Pitt win against Cleveland State

Senior forward Billy Brush raised his left hand high in the air after he dished the ball off… Senior forward Billy Brush raised his left hand high in the air after he dished the ball off to his teammate Keeyan Young.

Young accepted the pass, ran in alone on Cleveland State’s goalkeeper, and shot the ball under the goalie’s right arm to give the Pitt men’s soccer team a 3-2 overtime win on Wednesday at Founders Field.

Brush, who was playing his final game at Pitt, prematurely celebrated the goal, displaying his confidence in Young’s scoring ability.

“I was hoping it was going in, let’s put it that way,” Brush said, now bundled up. “I was praying to God it would; it’s pretty cold out here.”

The game-time temperature was 50 degrees, but dipped well into the lower 40s as the game progressed. Jokingly, Young said that is why he scored when he did.

“It was me and the keeper, and I was kind of upset that he stopped a couple of my earlier shots,” Young said, adding, “And I didn’t really want to be outside.”

What the Panthers really wanted, however, was to end the season with a win.

Cleveland State put an early damper on Pitt’s hopes in the 16th minute. Viking defenseman Alex Vickers crossed the middle of the field freely with the ball in his possession, and fired a shot from about 25 yards out that found the back of the net, giving the visitors a 1-0 lead.

Pitt’s Andy Jorgensen, who got the start at goalkeeper over Justin Lowery, was faked out on the play and could not stop the low shot.

The Panthers continued to place pressure on the Vikings’ defense, and as a result, Young drew a foul in the penalty box, which led to a penalty kick. Young set the ball on the 12-yard spot, approached it, and placed the ball to the right of Viking goalkeeper Chris Black, who guessed prematurely and went left. The goal, recorded at 27:05, tied the game at one.

Cleveland State quickly regained its lead with the help of a Pitt miscue. On a free kick, Viking midfielder David Stewart shot the ball across the box, from left to right, toward Jorgensen. Jorgensen moved to his left to make the save, but Pitt defender Brendon Smith slid in with the intention of kicking the ball out of harm’s way. Instead, the ball deflected off his leg and into the Panthers’ goal. All Smith could do was lie in the goal box, flat on his back, with both hands covering his face.

By the 71st minute, Smith was feeling much better when Brush bailed him out with a header past Black to knot the score at two.

Brush’s goal was a product of several Panther touches. Midfielder Thomas DeCato controlled the ball along the goal line, on the left side of the Cleveland State goal. He passed it to Tyler Bastianelli, who was around the top, left corner of the goal box. Bastianelli moved the ball to his right and shot it high across to the other side of the box, where Matt Langton used his head to send the ball on net.

Brush, standing about five yards out, leapt straight up, and redirected the ball with his head just beneath the crossbar and out of the reach of Black.

The goal was Brush’s sixth of the season and the 11th of his Panther career.

“I had a lot of fun this past season playing with the guys,” Brush said.

Young’s two-goal game pushed his season total to five and his Pitt career total to 16. The junior will have a chance next year, if he scores at least two goals and one assist, to move into Pitt’s top 10 all-time in both goals and assists. His coach, Joe Luxbacher, holds the record with 37 career goals at Pitt — and he only played for three years, from 1971 to ’74. Records aside, he was happy to just win.

“It’s nice to win an overtime game, rather than lose it,” Luxbacher said, referring to the six overtime games played this season, including a loss the night before to Syracuse.

Luxbacher explained after the game how this team was so close to being better than the record shows. He said that if they won the two overtime losses to West Virginia and Syracuse — games in which Pitt held a lead going into the final 10 minutes — the Panthers would have qualified for the Big East Tournament.

“We were close every game,” senior captain Jacob Kring said. “We’re a better team than our record shows.”

Luxbacher praised Kring, Brush and Justin Genes after the game; all three will be graduating this year.

“We’ll miss them,” Luxbacher said. “We only lose three, but they’re three good guys.”