A goal by Stanford’s Zach Bohane in the 74th minute broke a scoreless tie, and lifted the second-ranked Cardinal to a 1-0 win over Virginia on Friday night at a rainy Klöckner Stadium.
The match was as close to evenly played as you can get – Stanford (8-1-1, 3-0-1 ACC) had a 53 percent-to-47 percent possession advantage, though UVA (2-3-3, 0-2-2 ACC) was outshot 15-9 on the night.
The goal came when Stanford’s Will Reilly was taken down just outside the penalty area by UVA defender Albin Gashi. Initially, Gashi was issued a yellow card for his challenge. After video review, the decision was upgraded to a red card for denial of a clear goal-scoring opportunity. The Cavaliers would play the remaining 16 minutes with 10 men.
On the ensuing free kick, Stanford took a 1-0 lead as Bohane put his attempt off the left post and in.
Despite being down a man, Virginia controlled much of the possession for the remainder of the game but were ultimately unable to find an equalizing goal.
“In the first half we wanted to have more of the ball. We made adjustments and came out and played an excellent second half. We put ourselves in control of the game and gave ourselves the opportunity to go on to win and be the team to score that goal,” UVA coach George Gelnovatch said.
“We played against an excellent team today. I know this team believes that we can play the entire game like we did in the second half and do well in the second half of this season. Some strange things have happened, and that’s sport. We’ll deal with it, and we just keep going.”
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Chris Graham
