MIDDLETOWN — Outplaying the McKinleyville Panthers at both ends of the field didn’t change the fact that the Middletown Mustangs were trailing 1-0 late in the first half of their quarterfinal-round playoff game on Saturday afternoon in Middletown.
Middletown head Lamont Kucer, though a tad frustrated at that point, said he had an idea things would change if the Mustangs simply kept up the pressure, and he was right. Middletown scored late in the first half to pull even and pushed ahead to stay with two quick goals in the second half en route to a 3-1 victory over McKinleyville in the North Coast Section Division I postseason tournament.
Middletown (21-2-1), the No. 4 seed and 11-time defending North Central League I champion, advances to the semifinals on Wednesday against the top-seeded and undefeated Eureka Loggers (17-0). Game time is 7 p.m. at Eureka High School.
“We came out strong and were controlling possession,” Kucer said of the first half. “We were creating chance after chance after chance for ourselves but couldn’t anything to go in.”
No. 5 seed McKinleyville (10-9-1) ended up scoring first on a long shot.
“It must have been 30 yards away,” Kucer said. “The ball grazed the crossbar and went off the fingertips of our goalie. You’re outplaying a team but you find yourself down by a goal.”
It remained a 1-0 game until the closing minutes of the first half when sophomore Sophie Kucer, with an assist from Brie Alves, finally got the Mustangs onto the scoreboard.
“We talked at half about not getting discouraged,” Kucer said. “We just needed to keep taking shots and sooner or later they were going to fall.”
And they did.
Eight minutes into the second half Kucer struck again, this time on a long-range shot, perhaps 25 yards away, that skimmed the post before settling into the net and a 2-1 Middletown lead.
“It was hard and clean,” Kucer said of the shot by his daughter, which put the Mustangs ahead to stay. “The keeper had no chance.”
Two minutes later Georgia Guerrero took a pass from Kassi Agapoff and booted it squarely into the net for a 3-1 lead.
“We decided that if we got up by two goals we would change formations and drop a player back into defense just to make sure they didn’t get any scoring opportunities,” Kucer said.
The ultra-fast Agapoff was that player as she shifted from midfielder to defensive-mid.
“We were still able to put pressure on their defense even after Kassi switched positions,” Kucer said.
Middletown’s defense, a strength of the team all season, entered play a bit dinged up with Abby Sabater nursing an injured toe and Kelsey Lemoine not 100 percent because of the flu.
“I had to pull her out a couple of times to rest her,” Kucer said.
However, Middletown’s deep bench was up to the task as Zamora Rogers logged some quality minutes at center-back in place of Lemoine.
While the Mustangs enter Wednesday’s game against Eureka as the underdog, Kucer said the Mustangs are up for the challenge.
“They’re clearly the best team this year, but anything can happen once you take the field,” Kucer said. “We’re going to go out there and play hard and we’ll see what happens.”
The Middletown-Eureka semifinal winner will face the Fortuna-Arcata semifinal winner in the Division I championship game on Saturday at a site and time to be determined.
In other quarterfinal-round playoff action:
Fortuna 7, Lower Lake 2
At Fortuna, second-half goals by Kim Bautista and Jenny Orozco weren’t enough to lift the Lower Lake Trojans to a quarterfinal-round victory over No. 2 seed Fortuna on Saturday night.
Lower Lake (8-8-1), the No. 10 seed, upset No. 7 St. Helena 1-0 in an opening-round game but couldn’t duplicate that success against the Huskies (14-4-1), the defending Division I champions.
“Overall it was a tough game,” Lower Lake head coach Andrea Mahling said. “But it was an unbelievable season. I know the girls never thought we could get this far, but they were amazing.”
Lower Lake’s long four-hour road trip to Fortuna was nearly complete when the school bus the Trojans were traveling in experienced a flat tire.
“We were minutes from the high school when it happened,” Mahling said. “We had to shuttle the girls over with cars that were following us to the game.”
Fortuna led 3-0 at the half.
Mahling credited her two keepers, Michele Bautista and Alondra Solori Gonzalez, with solid efforts in the net as the two were under constant pressure throughout the game.
