UVM beats Binghamton, 1-0, to clinch NCAA berth

Austin Danforth | Free Press Staff Writer

Show Caption Hide Caption CatamounTV: Brian Wright Leads Vermont to America East Championship Brian Wright's 10th goal of the season proved to be a game-winner leading the Vermont Catamounts to a 1-0 victory over Binghamton and capturing the 2015 America East Men's Soccer Championship before a record crowd of 1,913 fans.

The wheels went into motion 12 months ago, Vermont taking aim at this moment — a team not only capable of hosting but winning the America East men’s soccer championship.

Indoor training through the winter months. A spring semester honing. A summer setting the foundation. Training camp and regular season to fine-tune the pieces.

It took some light remodeling for the Virtue Field-record 1,913 fans to see what happened next. Seats at a premium, the standing-room-mostly crowd angling for glimpses of the pitch anywhere it could, event staff peeled back the graphic signage on the fence around the pitch for the big reveal:

Vermont 1, Binghamton 0.

Brian Wright bagged the game’s only goal in the 33rd minute to lift the second-seeded Catamounts past the No. 5 Bearcats for UVM’s first conference crown and NCAA tournament berth since 2007.

“We’ve been talking about building this thing to this point for a while now and I had no question,” UVM coach Jesse Cormier said. “The biggest challenge I had was convincing them that they could do this exact thing.”

Title celebration begins early on the @UVMmsoccer bench. pic.twitter.com/9ry6D5uT8u — Austin Danforth (@eadanforth) November 15, 2015

Four days after toppling three-time defending America East champion UMBC at home in the semifinals, Vermont (11-6-3) offered up an even tastier victory for its supporters.

The Catamounts will learn their NCAA fate during the tournament selection show at 1 p.m. on Monday.

“Just to see the people standing over here, all over the vicinity, I’ve never seen so many people be so interested and so involved in the program and in the game,” Cormier said. “It’s great for the game of soccer in Vermont and I really appreciate the effort people made to come out and support these guys.”

Binghamton (10-8-2) triumphed in the teams’ regular-season meeting, 2-0, thanks to two first-half tallies. But a hot UVM squad — the Catamounts entered the game 5-1-2 in their last eight games — never gave the Bearcats the chance to repeat, continuing the form it used to reach the final.

“We found the goal and once you go up a goal against Binghamton they have to adjust and adapt and do some different things,” Cormier said.

Vermont goalie Greg Walton kept the Bearcats from getting an early, game-changing goal with a pair of stops in the first four minutes.

The junior stumped Ben Ovetsky point-blank at the right post and then snared the rebound attempt seconds later.

“I thought the game just came down to a couple of moments,” Binghamton coach Paul Marco said. “One, we didn’t take our moments in front of goal earlier in the game — we had a couple of very good chances and just didn’t put it in the goal.

“(And) their special guy was special.”

The special one, of course, was Wright, named the tournament’s most outstanding player after the game.

Denied on a breakaway in the sixth minute, the junior forward staked the Catamounts into the lead 12 minutes shy of halftime when teammate Jaime Miralles sprang a counter attack from the center circle.

As the sophomore midfielder charged forward, Wright darted between two defenders to meet Miralles’ sharp through ball. With the only touch he needed, Wright slotted a low left-footed shot past Bearcats goalie Robert Moewes and in off the right post.

“Those were the things we talked about. We couldn’t really give their guys space inside midfield and that’s kind of where they picked up the ball and started to run, slip the ball through,” Marco said.

Wright’s goal was the 25th of his career, sending him past Cormier and into sixth place in the program’s all-time scoring charts.

His current 27-point season is the fifth-best in UVM history and only the second time since the 1970s that a Vermont player has recorded that many in a single campaign.

“Brian is — I’ve told the conference coaches this — I think he’s the best striker, not just in the league, but I think he’s one of the best in the country,” said Cormier, who notched his 100th win in 12 seasons on Sunday.

“He’s just complete. He’s so dynamic, so skillful, he’s so long, he’s so quick. When he gets his opportunities, as opposed to some of the previous years, he buries them,” he said.

Binghamton’s best chance to equalize came with less than a minute to go in the first half, but Pascal Trappe’s driven, 35-yard free kick pinged the crossbar before going out of play. Walton and the UVM defense had the answers the rest of the way.

Walton finished with three saves to outduel Moewes (four saves), the league’s two-time reigning goalkeeper of the year. It was the Eastern Connecticut transfer’s fourth shutout of the year.

“He’s just so composed and poised, and I think it really serves him well,” Cormier said. “The bigger the game, the more relaxed Greg looks and I think that really helps our team knowing he’s relaxed, we’re going to relax and we’re going to focus on doing our different jobs and getting it done.”

The result is Vermont’s fifth America East crown and ninth trip to the NCAA tournament.

“It’s an exciting time — once you get into the dance, it’s like anything can happen,” Cormier said. “Now you’re playing for a national championship and that’s just fun.”

And that long process that started last November? It’s still a work in progress.

“We have been working since last spring at the beginning, trying to strengthen our weaknesses, analyze where we fell last season and at the end it seems like we did it,” Miralles said. “We are better this year and we showed it.

“Since the beginning we’ve felt like a winning team,” Miralles said.

This story was originally published Nov. 15, 2015. Contact Austin Danforth at 651-4851 or edanforth@freepressmedia.com. Follow him on Twitter at www.twitter.com/eadanforth