THORNDIKE — Elijah Allen doesn’t need a whole lot of time. Or space. But give him even a little bit of both in any combination at your own peril.
The junior striker turned in traffic and fired a shot under the crossbar early in the second half, and No. 3 Mount View made it hold up in a 1-0 win over No. 14 Medomak Valley in a Class B North boys soccer prelim Saturday afternoon. The Mustangs (15-0-0) — the only unbeaten team in the region this season — host Brewer in a quarterfinal at 3:30 p.m., Tuesday.
“They’re a tough defensive team, we knew that,” Allen said of Medomak. “We’re happy. One is all you need.”
After an opening 40 minutes saw Mount View defending against the wind, the Mustangs tried to open things up after the intermission.
It wasn’t as easy to do that as the home team might have hoped, not against an organized and physical back four for the Panthers (5-8-2). Medomak tried to limit Allen, and others on the attack, and did well at that game for almost all of the 80 minutes.
Only once did Allen, who fought through hard challenges, shirt tugs and more all afternoon, find an inkling of space from a prime scoring area.
“If you give him 12 and a half inches to slide that ball through, he’s got enough space to shoot,” Mount View head coach Dale Hustus said.
Proof positive came in the form of Allen’s goal. With two markers on him at the top of the 18-yard box, he settled and turned to goal, ripping a brilliant strike which evaded both the outstretched hands of Medomak goalkeeper Aiden Starr (eight saves) and the impending crossbar. The ball clipped the bar’s underside and dropped straight to the ground, just across the goal line.
“I knew where I was going to put it, placement-wise,” Allen said. “Some of it is that you hope it’s going to hit there.”
“They’re such a good team, very difficult to match up against,” Medomak coach Brian Campbell said. “Do we mark one person? We can’t. They have a lot of different tools there, a lot of different guys who can score goals. We said let’s play straight up, play good defense and see what happens.”
Medomak nearly stunned the crowd with an equalizer in the 59th minute.
Will Smith’s cross from the left side found the head of an unmarked Ian Doughty, but Doughty’s header clanged off the crossbar before Mount View’s Ricky Nelson (four saves) was able to recover and clear.
“We played a good game,” Hustus said. “We had about a 40 mile-an-hour wind in blowing in our face in the first half, and then Mother Nature decided to try and help Medomak and killed that wind in the second half.
“I think we played well. I’m very happy with the quality of game we played.”
Medomak looked to play long balls on quick counter-attacks in the first half, and the Panthers employed similar — if less frequent — strategy in the second. But once the visitors found themselves chasing a deficit late, it became a risk-reward situation. Open up too much, and the Mustangs appeared poised to add a second backbreaking goal.
“I thought it was coming,” Allen said. “The wind was definitely unfortunate this game. I thought it was definitely going to happen.”
“All the way back at the coin toss, we decided we were going to try and go with that win in the first half and go against it after,” Campbell said. “That could have been to our advantage, and we had a couple that almost went in and it could have made a difference.”
Travis Barrett — 621-5621
tbarrett@centralmaine.com
Twitter: @TBarrettGWC
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