DEKALB, Ill. – Northern Illinois scored two late goals in regulation against the Drake University men's soccer team Tuesday evening as the teams battled to a 2-2 draw in DeKalb, Ill.
"A very competitive battle tonight against a very good NIU team," said Drake head coach
Gareth Smith. "Both teams went toe to toe and invested a lot into the game. Although disappointed we didn't take all three points, there were lot of positive from our performance. We played very well for long periods of the game and deserved to be in the lead as we created a number of goal scoring chances."
Drake (6-4-2) went up early as junior
Antonio Sanchez (Iowa City, Iowa) scored his second goal of the season in the eighth minute (8:22). Junior goalkeeper
Jared Brown (Aurora, Ontario) sent a blast that redshirt senior
Steven Enna (Overland Park, Kan.) headed from midfield to Sanchez as he took care of the rest of the work, going 1v1 with the Northern Illinois (7-5-1) goalie, Konrad Dziedzic, and beating Dziedzic for the game's first goal.
Sophomore
Leroy Enzugusi (Marion, Iowa) added to the Bulldogs' lead with his team-leading seventh goal in the 69
th minute (69:52). Enzugusi flicked in a ball from inside the six-yard box after an initial shot by Ciszewski off a corner kick by redshirt junior
Cole Poppen (Ankeny, Iowa).
NIU evened the score with two goals by Nick Markanich within the span of almost three minutes. Both goals were assisted by his brother, Anthony Markanich. The first came in the 73rd minute (73:50) and the second in the 76
th minute (76:09).
Enzugusi ripped a rocket at the goal in the 87
th minute, but it went wide right as the teams went to overtime. In the first extra period, Brown recorded two clutch saves on three shots by the Huskies. Drake wasn't able to get a shot off in the first overtime, but sophomore
Ryan Johnston (West Des Moines, Iowa) quickly went to work in the second extra period. Johnston had his shot saved by Dziedzic 23 seconds in. Later, the teams traded shots as Ciszewski had his blocked and a NIU attempt went high. The Huskies would get two more later, but Brown saved the last one as the teams settled for the third tie in the all-time series.
Brown finished with a career-high 13 saves as the Huskies recorded 29 shots, including 16 on goal.
"Great to see Antonio get on the score sheet as we have challenged him to have a bigger impact in the final third and I thought tonight he was excellent," Smith said. "Leroy is also in great form. If we had a little more quality in our final pass and we can improve the timing of his movement in the final third he will score even more goals. Although we created two uncharacteristic goals, a lot of creativity has to go to our back line who showed good discipline in our defensive shape and made it very difficult for NIU front three who are a very dynamic group and dangerous. We need to develop our ability to close out games as we are scoring a lot of goals and more than enough to win games, but need to be more mature/experienced in how to manage games to see out the win."
Drake hosts Bradley Saturday night at 7 p.m. in the team's second-to-last home game this season. The Missouri Valley Conference match against their longtime rival will be broadcast on ESPN+.
