The game was quiet for 82 minutes as the Portland Pilots hosted the Loyola Marymount Lions on Friday night. The teams were locked in a scoreless tie until junior forward Erik Edwardson found the back of the net and put the Pilots ahead by a goal with just eight minutes remaining in the game. The score would hold and the Pilots took the game 1-0.
With their sixth straight win, the Pilots improve to 10-3-1 on the year and 4-0 in WCC play while LMU drops to 7-8 on the year and 1-3 in conference.
Freshman forward Benji Michel provided an offensive lift for the Pilots in the first half as he took two shots, one that narrowly missed finding the goal, but neither team was able to convert a chance.
The uneventful first half came to a close with the score tied at 0-0. Although the Pilots took four shots to LMU’s one, neither team was able to establish momentum in the early going.
The second half painted a different picture as both teams collected themselves at halftime and came out firing. LMU was the first team to strike in the second half. Pilots’ junior goalkeeper Paul Christensen was forced to make a diving save just two minutes into the half.
In the 53rd minute, senior midfielder Eddie Sanchez almost gave the Pilots the lead when he fired a shot from the top of the box that hit the crossbar and bounced to an LMU defender.
Chances were hard to come by once again until senior midfielder Eddie Sanchez found Edwardson open in the box. Edwardson fired a shot that bounced off two defenders before rolling into the goal.
“It was pure joy,” Edwardson said. “For us to be able to grind out wins like that is so important to us.”
The Pilots defense held strong for the entire 90 minutes as they secured their second straight shutout.
“We didn’t give up many chances on the night,” head coach Nick Carlin-Voigt said. “We’ve told the group that they have to post shutouts if they want to be a championship caliber team so it was great.”’
The Pilots’ undefeated record puts them at the top of the WCC standings.
The focus now is keeping the momentum going as the Pilots look forward to the last half of their slate of WCC games.
“We haven’t done anything yet and we have to keep pushing each other,” Edwardson said. “It’s going to be a grind and we have to keep pushing as hard as we can to finish this out and stay on top of the league.”
Carlin-Voigt is confident in his red-hot Pilots as they head into their next game.
“This group doesn’t need a lot of motivation,” Carlin-Voigt said. “When you have a group of guys who work hard for each other anything is possible.”
The Pilots will look to claim their seventh straight win on Sunday at 2 p.m. against San Diego on Merlo Field.
