ROCKVILLE CENTRE, N.Y. – Roberts Wesleyan University men's soccer coach Scott Reber spent a good portion of the first four weeks of the season delivering a familiar message to his team.
"Focus on the little things and put together a full 90 minutes," Reber has said on more than one occasion.
The Redhawks did those two things and more on Wednesday afternoon, earning an impressive 1-0 victory over host Molloy in an East Coast Conference matchup. The win moves the Redhawks (3-3-3, 2-0-1) into a first-place tie with Mercy entering Saturday afternoon's 3:30 p.m. showdown at Roberts.
"These guys just don't quit and they just kept going and going and going and came away with a good, solid team win," Reber said. "They played a full 90 minutes. We waited until the end to tuck one in, but we got a much-needed and well-deserved result."
As he has done all season, senior Tamas Nagy delivered in the clutch, scoring the game's only goal, for Roberts. Nagy took a nifty feed from Luke Hanes and beat the keeper from 12 yards out with 6:16 to play to complete a slick three-pass sequence that was started by Myles Palmer near midfield.
Nagy leads the ECC with seven goals and 17 points so far this season.
"Tamas is just quality," Reber said. "A lot of players may have felt the weight of the moment in that situation, but he didn't. He just came up big when we needed him to come up big."
Junior Caleb DaSilva stopped all three shots he faced, including a header off a direct kick with 17:25 to play to keep the game scoreless.
"The game opened up in the last 20 minutes and both teams had their chances," Reber said. "Fortunately, we were able to capitalize on ours and Caleb played really well. He wasn't tested a lot, but when he was tested he made some big saves."