STORRS — As beautiful as the game is, soccer often comes down to a fortuitous bounce. But such bounces often go the way of those who are in the right place at the right moment.
“Most goals I’ve had this year have been pretty good goals,” UConn’s Austin Brummett was saying Sunday. “I was due for a lucky one. Every striker gets a lucky one, and it was nice that it happened in big game like this, at a big time like that.”
Brummett couldn’t have cut this one down any closer. The public address announcer, Ed Weyant, was counting down the seconds to the first half when Brummett poked one, left-footed from the top of the box, toward the goalkeeper, a routine bit of play, except the ball slipped through Ryan Friedberg’s legs and into the goal with one second remaining.
It was Brummett’s second goal in a span of 2:49, and it was all it took for UConn to take control of an NCAA Tournament game that Cornell has been more or less dominating for the previous 40 minutes, and would control much of the second half, too.
Dom Amore: Can this CT native help UConn ‘ginga’ all the way in NCAA soccer tournament?
“Once they scored, we knew that it was a big game and we needed to do big things,” said Alex Tupay, who scored in the second half to seal the Huskies’ first College Cup win since 2018, a 3-1 victory before 2,048 at Morrone Stadium Sunday.
UConn is headed to play at No. 4 seed Maryland in the Round of 16, as wonderful opportunities open before their eyes, 25 years since the program’s last national championship.
“It’s my first time in the tournament, which I’m pretty excited about,” said Brummett, a grad student transfer from San Diego State. “I don’t think we’re going to approach it any differently than we usually do. We know if we can dominate both boxes, we’re going to have a chance in the game.”
Therein was the key to a memorable day for UConn, even if most of the campus was headed home for the holiday. Cornell controlled the ball for 58 percent of the game, outshot UConn 31-9, with eight shots on target, had 15 corner kicks to the Huskies’ two.
“The best team doesn’t always win,” Cornell coach John Smith. “We were the better team today, apart from the two boxes.”
The two boxes, of course, are where games are decided. UConn began building this team on the defensive side. Keeper Kyle Durham, who had seven saves Sunday, let one get by him in the first half, but nothing thereafter as the defenders helped keep things from getting two dangerous in front of him.
In the other box, the Huskies had Brummett ready to cash in on whatever opportunities were created.
“We are the type of team that is not afraid if the other team is dominating us,” Brummett said. “Kyle makes a mistake that’s unlike him, and we said, ‘we’ve got your back, we’re going to go get two.’ We don’t need a lot of chances to score, we’re pretty clinical with our chances.”
Cornell’s goal was just the kind of the gut punch this particular UConn team uses to its advantage, a slap in the face, a wake-up call. When they got into the box, Balthazar Saunders chipped it in, Charlie Holmes kicked it back toward the middle and Brummett, lunging, scored on the header to tie the game. “Just did what I had to do to get it into the net,” he said.
Dom Amore’s Sunday Read: Rare stress test for Geno Auriemma, CCSU slays another giant, and more
Moments later, Brummett, with Ayoub Lajhar and Marco Valentic assisting, got his “lucky one.” The brace gave him 10 goals for the season.
“Some guys have that (knack) and some guys don’t,” coach Chris Gbandi said. “When you have that striker like him, who always ends up where the ball is. Austin always seems to find himself where the ball is going to be. The way he carries himself, how hard he works and how competitive he is, has really rubbed off on our guys.”
The second half was more of the same, but Durham and the defense repelled every Cornell attack. In the 77th minute, on a free kick, Tupay scored on a header, his first career goal. Evan Pickering and Lajhar assisted.
“One of our biggest talking points with our group,” Gbandi said. “Between the boxes, a lot of people focus on that. We tend to focus on both boxes, that’s where the games are won. I thought we did a great job defensively in our box and in the other box, when we got our opportunities, which were few and far between, we took advantage of it.”
The Huskies move on now into a world where anything can happen. No, really, we say that in all sports, all tournaments, but this is soccer. Anything can happen. The balls bounced UConn’s way in this tournament in 1981, and again in 2000, when Gbandi scored the winning goal in the championship game.
“This tournament, soccer in general, it’s one bounce here, one play there, so you really have to make sure you’re making the plays where you’re getting those bounces,” Gbandi said. “Some days you do, some days you don’t, but we have enough good players here and we have a mentality that pushes to us hopefully getting the bounces in some of these upcoming games.”
To put it another way, the Huskies will be underdogs from here on out. This program has been there before and come out with the Cup. Maybe this group may just have inherited the right DNA.
“Our team lives for that, we live for being on the road, our backs to the wall, everything against us,” Brummett said.