Pleasant Hills, PA. – The Penn State Greater Allegheny Soccer Team (5-2-1, 3-1-1) continued their push for a Penn State University Athletic Conference playoff spot on Thursday when they beat Penn State Mont Alto (1-9-1, 0-5-1) 2-0. They had one of their best games of the season in terms of passing the ball, and their stout defense didn’t allow Mont Alto any opportunities to score.
After a scoreless ten minutes of play to start things off, Idriss Benjelloun (Harrisburg, PA./Susquehanna Township HS) would head one in the net off of a corner kick by Jagesh Subba (Pittsburgh, PA./Baldwin HS) to give PSUGA a 1-0 lead. It was Benjelloun’s second goal of the season and the first of two assists from Subba.
PSUGA held the 1-0 lead as the team’s broke for halftime, and were looking to add on in the second half. Senior Belmo Nurkic (Pittsburgh, PA./Baldwin HS) would help them do just that taking a pass from Subba and launching it into the net for his team leading 8th goal of the season to give PSUGA a 2-0 lead. Goalkeeper Colin Bucsok (Pittsburgh, PA./Thomas Jefferson HS) and the stout PSUGA defense would take it from there, shutting out Mont Alto the rest of the way and earning the victory.
Nurkic led his team’s 28 shot attack finishing with eight shots, three of which landing on goal. Nurkic and Benjelloun finished the day with one goal each while Subba came up with two assists and now has five on the season. Bucsok picked up his third shutout of the season having to make just three saves on three shots on goal in his 90 minutes in net.
With the win, PSUGA jumps up to fourth place in the PSUAC West Division heading into the final week of the season. They are currently in a stretch of four games in six days and will battle two big conference foes over the weekend with PSU-York on Saturday and PSU-Wilkes Barre on Sunday. PSUGA is trying to capture one of the top two seeds in the conference and need to keep winning to put themselves in position to be able to secure at least the #2 seed.
PSUGA will play the first of their two weekend games on Saturday when they travel to Penn State York. Kick-off for Saturday’s game is scheduled for 4 p.m.
