BALTIMORE, MD –
Junior Alex Gardner scored a brace to lead top-seeded Johns Hopkins to a 2-1 win over Muhlenberg in the Centennial Conference semifinals Friday night at Homewood Field. The Blue Jays improve to 12-4-2 while the Mules end their season at 7-8-3.
Hopkins advances to the Centennial Conference Championship game for the fifth straight year and 13
th time overall. The win is the 249
th in the career of head coach
Craig Appleby.
The Blue Jays scored twice in a seven-minute span late in the first half to quickly turn a scoreless game into a 2-0 Johns Hopkins advantage.
Gardner scored the first of his two straight goals with 9:49 on the first-half clock as he buried one from the doorstep. Sophomore
Brendan Listzwan collected a feed to the top of the box and sprung freshman
Rohan Aggarwal to the outside; Aggarwal quickly feed Gardner in the middle of the six-yard box, and he volleyed it home to open the scoring.
Just seven minutes later, it was Aggarwal and Gardner connecting again as Aggarwal challenged from the wing and got off a shot that was blocked but came right back to him. Still moving to the middle, he found an open Gardner at the top of the box, and he fired one through traffic to double the Blue Jay lead with less than three minutes remaining in the first half.
The Mules Lorenzo Vargas-Clarke had a good look on goal from the left side of the box in the 51
st minute, but junior
John Ghanem punched it away. A little less than six minutes later, the Mules got on the board when Jake Marks got a foot on Ghanem's goal kick and then fired a low shot inside the left post.
The Blue Jays withstood a flurry of shots in the final 20 minutes as the defense made the 2-1 lead stand to send Hopkins back to the championship game.
Muhlenberg outshot Hopkins, 11-10, while the Blue Jays had a 4-2 edge in corners. Ghanem and the Mules' Nico Famularo finished with one save each. Gardner tied the program record for goals in a CC Tournament game, while Aggarwal tied the record for assists. In addition, it was the third time in JHU men's soccer history in which a player had two goals and a player had two assists. It last happened on November 4, 2015 with
Kenny DeStefano (2 goals) and
Cole Rosenberger (2 assists).
Hopkins will take on fifth-seeded Haverford in the title game on Sunday, November 8. The game is slated for a 3:00 pm start at Homewood Field.
