MT. PLEASANT, S.C. – The College of Charleston men’s soccer team produced its finest offense outing of the season in a 4-2 win over Winthrop at Patriots Point on Wednesday evening. The Cougars scored in the second minute and then exploded for three second-half goals in under ten minutes.

The Cougars, now 4-4-0, dominated virtually every phase of the game and dictated the play through quality ball possession. The Cougars strung passes together cleverly and used that momentum to get forward, resulting in an 18-11 shot advantage and 7-2 corner-kick advantage.

“They’re a very good team,” said head coach Ralph Lundy. “They’re going to win a lot of games this year and they’re going to do real well in their conference. It was a good win for us; they’ve got good players. We’re at home and we’ve had some disappointing losses in the last week but today we put it together and got the goals.

“The biggest thing was that we took care of the ball. We played forward and took care of the ball. We’ve been better lately at possessing the ball. We had tons of chances in the second period and we got momentum. We were playing simple and connecting our passes.”

CofC stepped on the ignition right away and forced a corner kick in the opening 30 seconds of the game. The Cougars kept the ball in the offensive third following the corner opportunity and in the second minute Tyler Vukoder (Tega Cay, S.C.) sent a ball into the box in the direction of Sean de Silva (Port of Spain, Trinidad). An Eagle defender was able to nudge de Silva off the ball but it fell to Tony Kattreh (Neptune Beach, Fla.) who made a miraculous 180-degree turn-and-kick motion to the volley the ball out of midair and rocketed into the upper corner of the net.

The Cougars wouldn’t let up from there and kept the Eagles on the defensive for the entirety of the first 45 minutes and went into the locker room with a 10-4 shot advantage and the one-goal lead.

The second half was equally impressive for the Cougars and they got their first insurance marker in the 55th minute. The Cougars defended an Eagle corner kick well and then exploded out of their own box with numbers moving in the opposite direction.

Tam McGowan (Glasgow, Scotland) started the run by playing the ball to de Silva who took the ball the length of the left side of the pitch. Shawn Ferguson (Rock Hill, S.C.) sprinted the entirety of the field and beat everyone on the field to the Eagles’ six-yard box and volleyed home de Silva’s centering effort to put CofC up 2-0.

The goal provided the Cougars with great momentum and just over two minutes later Sam Redmond (Asheville, N.C.) cut through the ride side of the box and scored back across the goal mouth to his left for his first goal as a Cougar.

Just over two more minutes went by before Kattreh found his way through the left side of the box and made a last-second centering pass where de Silva collected the ball, feigned a shot once and then easily rolled the ball into the net to make it 4-0 Cougars.

Winthrop finally got on the board in the 67th minute with Mason Lavallet’s team-high fourth goal of the season which he achieved by running on to a ball played into the box by Achille Obougou and volleying it home.

The Eagles would add one more in the 88th minute when Marc Segara found a ball rattling around in a crowded box and snuck it into the net but the comeback effort would prove too-little, too-late as the Cougars would hang on for the 4-2 win.

The road gets tough for the Cougars with matches against No. 18 Coastal Carolina, No. 1 Maryland and No. 27 Furman up next for Lundy’s squad. CofC travels to Conway, S.C., for the Coastal matchup on Tuesday, Sept. 25. Kickoff is slated for 7 p.m.

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