Box Score
LANCASTER, Pa. – Franklin & Marshall College jumped to a 3-0 halftime lead and the second-ranked Diplomats snapped Gettysburg's five-match unbeaten streak, topping the Bullets 4-1 in a Centennial Conference (CC) men's soccer match Wednesday afternoon.
With just one match left on its schedule and the Dickinson-Muhlenberg match still to be played Wednesday night, the Bullets (8-4-3, 3-3-2 CC) are in fifth place in the Centennial Conference standings, with the top-five teams qualifying for the conference playoffs.
The conference-leading Diplomats (12-1-3, 7-0-1 CC), who won their seventh match in a row and stretched their unbeaten streak to eight, held a 17-10 shot advantage. Gettysburg was forced to play the final 43 minutes a man down due to a red card.
F&M got out to a quick start, as Alex Bilodeau struck in the 11th minute. The Diplomats doubled their lead on a header from Robert Maze midway through the period before Steven Siegfried rebounded in a shot with 2:05 left on the first-half clock to give the Dips their 3-0 halftime advantage. F&M outshot the Bullets 11-4 in the period, when starting goalie
Thomas Keane (Potomac, Md./Gonzaga College) made four saves for Gettysburg.
Junior
Max Karen (Huntington, N.Y./Elwood-John Glenn) came on to play the second half in goal for the Bullets and made one save while yielding just one goal, when Maze scored again four minutes into the period. Despite playing a man down for nearly the entire half, Gettysburg took the same number of shots (six) as the Diplomats in the stanza.
Gettysburg broke up the shutout when sophomore
Kingsley Nzekwe (Enugu State, Nigeria/New Garden Friends School [N.C.]) scored his first goal of the season. He converted in the 79th minute, taking a pass from freshman
Shane McWilliams (Perry Hall, Md./Loyola Blakefield) and burying a shot into the lower-left corner of the net. It was the first collegiate point for McWilliams.
The Bullets conclude the regular season on Saturday, when they visit McDaniel College in a Centennial Conference match starting at 3:30 p.m.
