Persistence, Balance Allow Cats to Survive Sweet 16
Kentucky kept knocking, but the door wouldn’t open.
The Wildcats created chance after chance, only to see each one foiled – some on brilliant saves, others with UK narrowly missing the target.
“The beauty of soccer is it’s gonna take sometimes some time to break the other team down,” Johan Cedergren said. “That’s why you play for 90 minutes or more. I think again we did some things really well in the first half, but they were either able to clear it or the goalkeeper made a couple of saves. But it’s also one of those where keep giving us chances and we’re going to find a way to put a ball in the net.”
That kind of confidence is hard earned for Cedergren and a Kentucky team that parlayed a sweep of the Conference USA regular-season and tournament championships into a No. 3 overall seed in the NCAA Tournament. Regardless whether the breakthrough has come within a couple minutes or late in the second half, it has almost always come. UK’s 19-1-1 record is proof of that.
A breakthrough came again on Friday – twice – and this time it sent UK to a 2-1 victory over Lipscomb in the Sweet 16.
Jason Reyes finally provided the first in the 76th minute by hammering home a loose ball in the box while laying on the ground. Fifty-five seconds later, however, Lipscomb answered to force a second set of heroics. This time, Bailey Rouse answered by chesting in a well placed free kick by Marcel Meinzer for an 82nd-minute winner.
“It wasn’t the guys that have scored most of the time for us this year, but it also shows the strength in how good we are in terms of going forward,” Cedergren said.
Indeed, Reyes and Rouse hadn’t been go-to guys entering Saturday’s match. UK’s potent scoring duo of JJ Williams and Kalil ElMedkhar were held in check, but Williams hardly cared. In fact, that made him enjoy the victory even more.
“I had a poor performance and didn’t finish the way we needed to, Kalil didn’t finish but that was the beauty of them stepping up and winning us the game,” Williams said. “That’s a championship team. I think this is my favorite win of the entire season, not any of those other ones where I’m scoring goals because it shows how close this team is and shows how big this team can be and how far this team can go.”
Kentucky has already gone quite far, with Saturday’s win sending the Cats to the first Elite Eight berth in program history. UK will host No. 11 Maryland for with a trip to the Final Four on the line next weekend and will likely need to play better to best the perennial power Terrapins, but the fact that UK survived not playing its best gives Cedergren plenty of reason for encouragement.
“I think again being able to get through a game like tonight with a win – even though we maybe didn’t play at 100 percent – shows how good of a team we have, shows how good of a squad we have,” Cedergren said.
