— A sports team that finishes with the best record in its league doesn’t often consider itself a playoffs underdog. But that’s the spin the North Carolina Courage brought to their NWSL semifinal tilt Sunday against the Chicago Red Stars..

Manager Paul Riley and several Courage players cited North Carolina’s 0-3 regular season record against Chicago, plus the fact that a NWSL Supporters Shield recipient has never won the league championship in the same season.

The underplay appeared apt during the nervy early stages of Sunday’s semifinal, played in front of a club-record 10,017 fans at WakeMed Soccer Park. But in the shank of the match, a deflected shot by North Carolina’s Denise O’Sullivan redirected over the goal line and proved the gamer-winner for a 1-0 victory over the Red Stars, punching the Courage’s ticket to the NWSL championship game next Saturday in Orlando, Fla.

“I thought we deserved to win the game,” Riley said. “We created more chances than them, but they’re a great side. They beat us three times this year, so we had to beat Chicago to go win (the championship). So now it’s about one game and 90 minutes.”

Many of the Courage’s pregame plans appeared to go awry in the 9th minute when their number 10 Debinha left the match with a dislocated elbow. Kristen Hamilton came on, but the Courage midfield looked out of sync for the remainder of the opening 45. North Carolina’s best scoring chance came just before halftime, when Abby Erceg got a leaping head onto a Courage corner, but Chicago’s Katie Naughton legged the ball off the line.

Like prize fighters, each squad spent the second stanza feeling each other out and exchanging occasional blows.

“The first half was ugly—I think both teams didn’t settle at all,” Riley said. “I think the most important thing was halftime, getting them in, calm them down a little bit. I just put up a poster that read, ‘Relax, no fear,’ because we just looked totally scared. In the second half, we settled in. McCall [Zerboni] and Sam [Mewis] got a grip on the game and starting feeding the right side. We got Taylor [Smith] up a little higher, which helped us get behind and put more crosses in.”

Photos: NC Courage vs. Chicago Red Stars

On cue, the Courage found the game-winner in the 90th minute. A corner kick by Mewis corner bounced off the scapula of Jessica McDonald and out to O’Sullivan, whose shot from atop the box deflected off Julie Ertz’s calf before dribbling over the line past helpless Chicago goalkeeper Alyssa Naeher.

“The ball deflected off Jess when she went up to head it, and the first thing on my mind was I want to score this,” O’Sullivan said. “It bounced it front of me, and I hit it as hard as I could. To be honest, I didn’t think I could score from the edge of the box.”

It was a fitting coda for O’Sullivan, an Irish international who was released by the Houston Dash in July before being claimed off waivers by the Courage.

“It’s been a roller coaster of a year,” O’Sullivan said. “But I couldn’t have ended up in a better place. They’ve been absolutely amazing since I came here. The fans, the club, my teammates … I’m really glad I ended up here.

“There were talks about going to Germany or Europe,” O’Sullivan continued. “And then I got that phone call from Paul [Riley] that they were interested. Playing in the American league was always something I wanted to do; the league is great, and I wanted to stay here. The minute he phoned me and said there’s an option for me in the midfield here, there were no talks—I was here a few days later.”

The Red Stars made one final stab at an equalizer off a free kick at the tail end of added time that bounced around the box before Mewis headed the ball out of the goal mouth.

“Once Paul and I made the decision that, alright, we’re just going to open it up and let it go out, there was always going to be a goal in the game,” said Chicago manager Rory Dames. “It was just a matter of who got it first. And [the Courage] looked more likely to score over large portions of the game than we did.”

Dames said the most disappointing thing about Sunday’s game was that, “I’m not sure everyone turned up for us,” specifically exempting Casey Short, who he said was “fantastic.”

“I thought it was a fair result,” Dames said. “We were second-best in a lot of the game. We rested players last week and everybody thought there were all these conspiracy theories. The reality is our players were tired. It’s a long season. It’s great to have a lot of players who go in and out [with national team duty]. But our players don’t just go in and out; our players play a lot. We got caught chasing the battle a ton in the first half, which is a credit to North Carolina. We got to the 60th minute and we were still chasing them. Yuki [Nagasato] was able to come in and get a hold of [the game] a little bit for us. But we just could never slow it down enough to get a hold of it and do anything dangerous in the final third.”

By finally vanquishing the Red Stars, the Courage advances to the NWSL championship final next Saturday, October 14 against the Portland Thorns, which defeated the Orlando Pride yesterday in the other league semifinal. The Courage, née Western New York Flash, is looking to repeated as NWSL champions following the Flash’s 2016 league title.

“Portland is a very good side,” Riley said. “They’re a little bit more transition-oriented than they were in previous years. Their back five is difficult to break down, but we have a lot of pace up front. It’s going to be a chess game next week—I don’t think you’re going to see a ton of goals. I think it’s the two best teams over the season going to the final.”

BOX SCORE

LINEUPS

NC: Rowland, Smith, Erceg, Dahlkemper, Hinkle, Zerboni, Mewis, O'Sullivan, Debinha (Hamilton, 10’), L. Williams, Hatch (McDonald, 83’)

CHI: Naeher, Short, Johnson (McCaffrey, 90’), Naughton, Gilliland, Ertz, Colaprico, Huerta, DiBernardo, Hoy (Nagasato, 57’), Press

GOALS

NC: O’Sullivan, 90’ (McDonald)

CHI: ---

CAUTIONS

NC: ---

CHI: Colaprico, 34’

EJECTIONS

NC: ---

CHI: ---

ATTENDANCE: 10,017