Men’s Soccer Wins OAC Tournament title with 3-0 win over Marietta

OAC Men's Soccer Champions

By Patrick Masara

| Box Score | OAC Tournament Site |

ADA — The third-seeded ONU Men’s Soccer team won the Ohio Athletic Conference Tournament defeating four-seeded Marietta 3-0 Saturday afternoon in the finals at the ONU Soccer Field.

This is Polar Bears’ second OAC Tournament title in its history with the first one coming in 2006.

ONU improves its record to 17-5-1 overall while Marietta moves to 11-7-3 overall.

The 17 wins on the season are the most in Ohio Northern Men’s Soccer history.

By shutting out the Pioneers, ONU also broke the school record for team shutouts with their twelfth of the season.

Ohio Northern earned it’s first goal of the game at the 5:58 mark when the ball was centered in toward junior Jimmy Matuszak, but a Marietta defender kicked the ball into the back of the net when he attempted to clear the ball away.

At the 35:50 mark, sophomore Chaz McCullah passed the ball into the right side of the keeper’s box to freshman Nate Bascom who then proceded to blast the ball off of the keeper’s hands into the top right corner of the goal to give the Polar Bears a 2-0 lead heading into halftime.

McCullah now has eight assists this season while Bascom earns his thirteenth goal of the year.

Freshman Christian Huelsman had a shot saved by the Marietta goalkeeper only to get the rebound and put in his OAC-leading sixteenth goal of the season at the 77:59 mark.

Junior goalkeeper Aaron Collins had one save on the afternoon to extend his individual school-record and OAC-lead on shutouts this season as he has earned all 12 this season for ONU.

“I want to congradulate the seniors for what they’ve done,” ONU coach Brent Ridenour said. “This means a lot for everyone. I give a lot of credit to Marietta.

The game was closer than the score indicated. We now are able to look forward to the NCAA tourament.”

The Polar Bears earned the OAC’s automatic NCAA Division III Tournament birth. Who and where they play will be announced on Monday.