Goals were hard to come by in Boston College men’s soccer’s matchup with Brown, but it certainly wasn’t for a lack of intensity.
The teams combined for 22 fouls on Tuesday, outnumbering their combined total shots by three. The Bears took just six shots while racking up 12 total fouls, including three yellow cards and a red card.
In an intense, physical contest, Brown (6–3–1, 0–1–1 Ivy) outlasted BC (3–5–3, 1–3–1 Atlantic Coast) after scoring the game winner in the 22nd minute and hanging on to win 1–0.
The teams combined for four shots in the game’s first 11 minutes, including three shots from Brown in the first six minutes. Both BC and the Bears were successful in drawing corner kicks, and both sides played aggressively.
This back-and-forth play didn’t last throughout the whole first half, though. The Bears began the match with a dominating onslaught of corner kicks, but steady pressure from the Eagles outpaced them. BC recorded nine shots in the first half compared to Brown’s five.
BC’s offense featured strong individual performances in the first half, but its players failed to find the net. Forward Stefan Sigurdarson demonstrated his continued ability to perform against a tough opponent with three shots in the first half.
Midfielder Tyshawn Rose kept consistent pressure on the Bears’ right wing but couldn’t connect with Sigurdarson to score.
“Tyshawn actually had a great performance,” BC head coach Bob Thompson said. “They were defending so deep that [his plays] got cut out … so it didn’t give him an opportunity to show on his stats how well he played.”
A surprise fast break from Brown’s Kojo Dadzie brought unexpected pressure on BC’s right side. In the 21st minute, Dadzie deceptively passed through BC’s defense and fired a missile past the keeper to put the Bears up 1–0.
While the remainder of the first half was scoreless, it was not without physicality. Brown incurred 10 fouls in the first half alone, which Thomspon said was a strategic move.
“It’s a tactical thing for them—trying to slow up the play, because we had a lot of the ball … and they were trying to slow it up, which worked,” Thompson said.
The Eagles countered Brown’s first-half fouls with penalties of their own in the second half. In the 63rd minute, BC midfielder Ted Cargill broke through Brown’s defensive line, and a series of scrambles and slide tackles left BC defenseman Christian Bejar with a yellow card.
The contest marked Bejar’s second straight game in which he received a yellow card after earning one in BC’s shutout of NC State on Oct. 7.
As the teams fought their way through the second half, officials whistled a red card against Brown’s Kyle Gee, which put a stop to the Bears’ intentional fouling. Up a man, BC continued to maintain possession but couldn’t find the net.
