Raiders roll in first playoff game

The Northwestern men’s soccer team won two big games this week, defeating Concordia on Saturday 2-1 to secure homefield advantage in the first round of the GPAC tournament, then edging Doane 1-0 Wednesday night in their first playoff game.
Against Doane, the Raiders were without their injured starting goalkeeper, freshman Luis Hernandez.
Sophomore goalkeeper Alex Plagge went down early with an injury in the first half. Doane appeared to score when the injury took place, but it was called off because of the foul on Plagge. This forced NW to send out junior defender AJ Grewall.
“You know it’s going to happen, right?” said coach Dan Swier. “That’s the way it goes. When you don’t have another guy in line, it’s going to happen. [Alex] has a concussion. He got shoved off balance, and his head hit the post. He’s for sure out Saturday, and hopefully Luis will be back.”
But the Raiders’ defense locked in, keeping Doane away from the goal despite a late surge.
“I thought defensively, we played a great game,” Swier said. “They didn’t have any good scoring chances, especially in the second half.”
Then midway through the second half, sophomore defender Harri Edwards dribbled up the field, danced past a defender, and scored the game’s only goal. NW held on through Doane’s final furious charge in the last minute.
“It’s the playoffs. A win is a win,” Swier said. “It might not be pretty, but you just have to do what it takes to survive.”
Against Concordia on Saturday, the Raiders were fighting for fourth in the GPAC, looking for the right to host a first round game of the GPAC tournament.
Junior forward Mario Garcia scored in the 13th minute, and Concordia equalized right away. But freshman midfielder Gabriel Gonclaves scored the game winner midway through the first half.
“I thought that we just had great effort for a full 90 minutes,” said sophomore midfielder Nick Hengst. “We put pressure on the ball all over the field and were able to win the majority of 50/50 balls, which ended up making a huge difference for us.”
The Raiders were aware of the conference implications going into the game.
“We were really only focusing on winning so that we could have a chance of playing a home game in the first round of playoffs,” Hengst said.
NW returns to Hastings, Neb., Saturday as the No. 4 seed to face the conference tournament No. 1 Broncos.