Long Beach State holds UC San Diego scoreless in fourth quarter, win 11-8

The No. 10 ranked UC San Diego Tritons was close to pulling off an upset against No. 9 Long Beach St. 49ers on Friday night, but the 49ers were able to shutout the Tritons to win 11-8. Heading into the final quarter UCSD was leading 8-7, and were looking to pull of their first win of the year over a higher ranked team, but they fell apart in the fourth quarter to ultimately lose the game by three goals.

The Tritons were looking good in the second quarter where they scored three straight goals to take an early 4-2 lead early in the second quarter. Long Beach State's Dimitrios Lappas cut the lead to one with a goal with 59 seconds to play in the half.

Both teams went on runs in the third quarter. After the two teams exchanged goals, Long Beach State took a 7-6 lead with a 3-0 run, and then UCSD answered with a pair of goals to end the third quarter with an 8-7 lead.

The fourth quarter started with Long Beach State's Nolan McConnell began their rally by scoring the tying goal within the first minute of the fourth quarter, and that goal would be McConnell's third of the game. Then Carter Taylor, Spencer White, and Milos Vrzic each added a goal in the fourth quarter to finish of UCSD.

Tritons head coach Denny Harper felt the team played well through three quarters:

"It got away from us," said Harper. "I thought we played really well though. Long Beach is a good team with a lot of weapons."

"For three quarters, we were executing the game plan to a tee," said Harper. "We knew it would be a close ball game, but clearly the fourth got away from us. A few calls here and there could have gone either way but overall, in particular without Josh Stiling playing tonight, I thought the guys rallied really well."

Missing Stiling was huge as he led the team with 49 goals, and the next closest player is Lukas Syka who had 14 goals heading into this game against Long Beach State. Had Stiling's in this game could have possibly been the difference.