Cleveland State is going dancing again. Championship MVP Alex De Nittis scored in the 86th minute on Saturday to lift the No. 6 seed Vikings past No. 2 seed Purdue Fort Wayne 3-2 in Fort Wayne, giving Cleveland State its second consecutive Horizon League men’s soccer championship and the fourth league title in program history, the Horizon League reported.
The final had everything a championship match can hold: five goals, two penalty kicks, a red card in the fifth minute and a winner four minutes from full time. Purdue Fort Wayne played the majority of the match a man down after the early red card, yet twice took the lead — and still could not hold off the Vikings, according to the league’s championship report.
The Mastodons struck first despite the early dismissal. Christian Agyekum opened the scoring in the 4th minute — a goal that came, remarkably, around the same stretch of play in which Purdue Fort Wayne lost a player — and Cleveland State answered through Domenic Ruggiero, who equalized in the 20th minute, the Horizon League reported.
The second half turned on the penalty spot. Karsten Ternes converted a penalty kick to put the Mastodons back in front, and Uzman Ramees answered with a penalty kick of his own to knot the match at 2-2, according to the league report. Mastodons goalkeeper Sep Habibi stopped five Cleveland State shots to keep the final level into its closing minutes.
De Nittis settled it in the 86th minute, scoring the game-winner that gave Cleveland State its first lead of the match — a lead the Vikings, as the league noted in its live coverage, would not give back. The goal capped a tournament run that made the junior the championship’s Most Valuable Player, and he was joined on the All-Tournament Team by teammates Tom Mertz, Ramees and Ruggiero, the Horizon League announced.
The title is the second straight for Cleveland State and its fourth Horizon League crown overall — and it came from the bracket’s bottom half. As the No. 6 seed, the Vikings had to win their way through the tournament field on the road, and they finished the job on the home field of the No. 2 seed, a Purdue Fort Wayne side that had the lead twice in the final even while playing short-handed for some 85 minutes.
The All-Tournament Team told the story of the weekend around the final: Milwaukee placed Carson Pridie and Breon Jarvis on the team, Wright State placed Djafar Albadawi and Alex Normandeau, and Purdue Fort Wayne placed Aidan Antcliff, Jonny Hernandez and Ternes alongside its final loss, the Horizon League announced. Cleveland State’s four selections — De Nittis, Mertz, Ramees and Ruggiero — were the most of any school, fitting for the team that left Fort Wayne with the trophy.
What we know — and what we’re still waiting on
What we know, from the Horizon League’s championship report: Cleveland State won 3-2 on De Nittis’s 86th-minute winner; both teams converted penalty kicks in the second half; Purdue Fort Wayne played most of the match with 10 men after a 5th-minute red card; and the Vikings hold the league’s automatic bid to the NCAA Championships as back-to-back champions. What we’re still waiting on: Cleveland State’s NCAA first-round opponent, site and kickoff time — the one thing Saturday’s trophy did not decide. Ohio college soccer had a championship Saturday to remember: hours later in Bowling Green, Bowling Green won the Missouri Valley crown on penalties to give the state two conference champions in one night.
The Fort Wayne program Cleveland State beat was in the middle of a remarkable weekend of its own — its volleyball team had pushed Wright State to five sets in Dayton on Saturday in a match NewsForce247 covered as the Raiders’ comeback win — but the soccer final belonged to the Vikings and their MVP.
What happens next comes quickly: Cleveland State learns its NCAA Tournament matchup during the NCAA Selection Show at 1 p.m. ET on Monday, November 16, the Horizon League said. Game details in this report are from the Horizon League.
Photo: Michael K, CC BY-SA