Robert Huskey/ Daily Titan
In a change of scheme, senior midfielder Jonathan Birt moved up as an extra forward to knock in the game-winning goal with his head in the 104th minute of a double overtime match to win 2-1.
“The ball was played out wide, and I knew if I was able to get in the box and beat my man I had a chance because, you know, I could out jump everyone,” Birt, a senior kinesiology major, said.
Mark Vasquez crossed the ball into a crowd of players in front of the net where Birt was able to get a head on it, placing the ball in the back of the net to secure a golden goal victory for the Titans.
The Titans began the season by losing their first three games in what Head Coach Bob Ammann, who is in his seventh season as head coach, describes as the team beating themselves, against American, Portland, and Cornell.
“We just have to stop giving away opportunities, and we have to go take ours,” Ammann said.
The team came into the game with determination to be more physical, drawing 16 fouls and five yellow cards, including a scuffle that had to be broken up at the start of the first half in front of the Titan bench. The struggle drew a yellow card for Titan forward Jameson Campbell.
“We take it upon ourselves not to play as a dirty team, but we think if we are the more aggressive team, we have more fouls at the end of the day, than we could definitely get the results,” said defender and team captain Bobby Reiss.
In what seemed like a flat start to the game, the fire instilled in the team coming into the second half, down 1-0, inspired the Titans enough to change the momentum of the game in their favor.
In the 86th minute of the game, Titan senior forward Jesse Escalante punched in the game-tying goal. It was an indirect free kick, inside the left corner of the 18-yard box, that helped set up a cross from Birt to Escalante, who took advantage of the opportunity.
“It was a set piece,” Escalante said. “I got the rebound at the right place and the right time and put it in the bottom right corner.”
The Titans won the battle of shots on goal with eight of them on target, while UNLV had six on the mark.
Red-shirt freshman goalkeeper Adam Zepeda recorded five saves while the UNLV goalkeeper recorded six saves.
The lone goal scored against Zepeda and the Titans in the 19th minute of the game came off a mistake from defender Nick Swart, who muffed the ball and let a UNLV forward break away and cross the ball on a give-and-go, leaving the keeper one-on-one against UNLV’s Joaquin Rivas.
Rivas put the ball in the right hand side of the net, giving UNLV a 1-0 lead for most of the match.