Cougars fall in OT at Elk Grove
By Matt Le Cren

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After blowing a great scoring chance in the first half, Elk Grove senior Connor Murphy was in need of a little redemption.

He got it in the 92nd minute of Tuesday’s Mid-Suburban League crossover match with visiting Conant.

Murphy tallied his third goal of the season 1:45 into overtime to give the Grenadiers (2-0-3, 1-0-1) a 1-0 victory in a match dominated by the defenses.

“The miss was tough,” Murphy said. “I had an open net, but it always feels good to beat these guys because I’ve got a lot of friends on the team and it just happened that I was the hero tonight, I guess.”

Murphy’s miss came with 17:35 left in the first half when Jonathon Arzeta fed a pass up the left wing to a streaking Ben Castellanos. A cross by Castellanos was cut off but bobbled by Conant goalie Patryk Openchowski and the ball went straight to a startled Murphy, who one-timed a shot over the crossbar.

“That’s kind of one of those things where you expect the goalie to get it, it pops out and you sort of react,” Elk Grove coach Joe Bush said. “You see that a million times during the season. They’re not easy, so I was happy he [later] got that [goal]. He’s working hard.”

Murphy’s goal did not come without a little controversy and luck. The play started when Gio Garcia intercepted a pass in the Conant zone and sent a perfect through ball to Murphy on the right wing.

Murphy’s shot from a tough angle hit the inside of the left post and crossed the goal line before hitting the right post and spinning back to Openchowski.

“I don’t know how they’re telling me it hits off that post, then it spins behind the goal and comes back and hits the other post,” Conant coach Jason Franco. “I don’t know how that’s possible.

“We played okay defensively, but no matter how well you play, when you give a ball away like that, I don’t know what [the defender] was thinking. The guy wasn’t open that he was trying to pass it to and he tries to pass a one-time ball and it gets intercepted. When that happens you’re going to be out of shape. So they make a good one-pass and the guy hits a good shot.”

A shot that hits both pipes is relatively rare, but this was not the first time it’s happened to Murphy. He had a similar shot last year against Barrington. That one did not go in.

“I saw their guy step up on Gio and they were doing the offsides trap all night stepping up, so I stayed with their last defender and he played that ball right through and I got a good shot off,” Murphy said. “It was a little bit of redemption for last year [when] it hit the post and spun out. This one fortunately just hit the inside of the post and went in over that line.”

For the longest time, it appeared no ball would cross the line. While both sides had no trouble getting the ball into each other’s penalty area, the inside of the net proved to be undiscovered country.

For that you can blame Openchowski, who made five saves, and his Elk Grove counterpart, Daniel Alvarez, who made two saves, one of which was a diving effort to snare a sharp header by Blake Fairbanks on the left post with 4:30 left in regulation.

The keepers got plenty of help from their back lines. Elk Grove defenders Manny Pillado, Avery Cheng, Sergio Aguirre and Tony Romero were steadfast, especially in the second half when Conant started to gain more control, while Conant’s back line of Eduardo Ocamp, Justin Pydo, Nathan Marasigan and Curtis King matched them play-for-play during regulation.

“Both defenses did awesome,” Bush said. “Conant does such a tremendous job of dropping off all of their backs, so I told our guys we’re not going to be able to go over the top and we’re going to have to play as a team, and Gio did a nice job penetrating, getting him a step and then Connor slid it through and he had a tough angle to finish.”

Thus the finish was anticlimactic for the Cougars (3-2, 0-1), who felt as though it was only a matter of time before they scored. Conant’s best chance came with 7:30 to go when Victor Moskal hit the crossbar with a header and Dino Kandalepas knocked the rebound too high.

“They had a handful of decent chances that they probably should have scored on but I think in the last 30 maybe of regulation we started generating,” Franco said. “We got our set pieces, we got a couple headers toward goal, hit a crossbar. I thought it was coming.”

Arzeta is Conant’s most dangerous offensive player and takes all of his team’s restarts, but Franco said no one player stood out.

“They all played about the same, but that’s kind of how our team is; we don’t have a superstar,” Franco said. “We just all do our job. Our back line for the most part did pretty well.

“Kevin Quinn and even Nathan Marasigan, for being not very fast, he does a pretty good job back there keeping the ball in front of him. And Justin Pydo has been one of our best players lately. He does a lot in the middle for us and obviously Gio [Rocha] is our playmaker.

“I thought it was an OK effort from us, kind of one of those scrappy MSL games that could have gone either way.”