MORGANTOWN, W.Va. — West Virginia faced adversity early in Wednesday’s Mountain State Derby against top-ranked Marshall at Dick Dlesk Soccer Stadium.
The way the Mountaineers responded to it, you’d have hardly known.
The Thundering Herd struck less than 6 minutes into the match when Matthew Bell put home a rebound to give the visitors the early lead.
Exactly 5 minutes later, Sergio Ors Navarro scored off an assist from Luke McCormick to pull No. 5 West Virginia even at 1. The Mountaineers struck twice more immediately after scoring their first goal. Marcus Caldeira scored his first of three goals 11:34 into the match, and 26 seconds later, Caldeira scored again off a feed from Otto Ollikainen. That gave West Virginia three goals in a span of 1:45, and the Mountaineers never looked back in a 5-2 victory over a Herd squad that entered as the nation’s last remaining unbeaten and untied team.
“We didn’t panic and stayed the course and stuck to our tactics and what it was we were trying to do,” WVU head coach Dan Stratford said. “It’s huge when you can equalize as early as we did, but then it just got better and better for that little period for sure.”
Moments before Ors Navarro opened the scoring for WVU, the Mountaineers (10-0-4, 3-0-3) came up with a takeaway at midfield and he delivered a pass to McCormick, before receiving the ball back and beating Marshall goalkeeper Gabriel Perrotta with a left foot shot.
The first of Caldeira’s three goals came on a long pass delivered by WVU keeper Jackson Lee, allowing the Mountaineers’ top goalscorer to get behind the Herd back line and give his team a 2-1 lead.
That marked just the second time all season Marshall (12-1, 5-1) has trailed in a match and for the Herd, things immediately took a turn for the worse directly after falling behind. A Marshall giveaway deep in its own end allowed Ollikainen to slip a pass to Caldeira, who scored his 11th goal this season to make it a multi-goal advantage 12 minutes in.
“We just kept slipping and falling over,” Marshall head coach Chris Grassie said. “On the plays, the guys kept falling over. Didn’t maybe didn’t wear the right footwear. In fact, that was definitely what was happening. We had one transition where they played long, we dove in and kind of slipped a little bit and the guy kind of goes around us. But it was basically just slips and errors and mistakes that never happen and will not happen again. Just one of those things.”
The Herd didn’t waste time cutting its deficit in half as Morris Duggan scored off an Alexander Stjernegaard assist at the 17:22 mark to bring MU to within 3-2.
That remained the score for the rest of the opening half, though both teams had quality chances late in the half. WVU nearly generated a fourth goal in the 43rd minute, but Ryan Crooks’ shot hit off the crossbar and tricked out of bounds for a Marshall goal kick.
Just before halftime, it appeared as though the Herd would pull even when Joao Roberto sent a chip shot beyond Lee with time winding down, only for WVU defender Frederik Jorgensen to make a sliding stop and send the ball sailing over the goal just before the shot could cross the goal line.
“It’s the most pivotal moment of the game probably,” Stratford said. “If you go in knowing you’ve scored three goals and you’re not winning the game at halftime, it’s a slightly different take on things. I’m sure we still would’ve been incredibly positive with the guys and really proud of what we had done to that stage of the game, but anytime you score three goals in a half, you expect to be in the lead. It definitely would’ve taken a little bit of a knock in the confidence, especially in the nature of the clock counting down.”
The Mountaineers had a golden opportunity to add to their lead in the 54th minute when Yutaro Tsukada was 1-on-1 with Perrotta, but Tsukada’s shot sailed well high.
It proved inconsequential when Caldeira beat Perrotta with a left-foot shot in the 65th minute, giving him three goals in the match and WVU’s first hat trick in nine years.
“He was fearless and he quickly learned that he probably had the physical dominance and the better of it when it came to their two center backs and the way they matched up, and he cashed in and took full advantage,” Stratford said. “Incredibly proud for him and there may not be another person that deserves it as much as he does.”
Constantinos Christou’s unassisted goal in the 74th minute put to rest any thought of a Herd rally in the late stages.
“It’s fantastic. It can’t be the pinnacle. I’ve said that before and I said that in 2021 when we beat Pitt,” Stratford said. “But it can be something that gives us a ton of belief and confidence that we can go toe-to-toe with anyone in the country and when we really show the discipline, execution and tactics we set out today, it couldn’t have gone more perfect for us in that regard.”
WVU attempted 19 shots to Marshall’s 11 and recorded nine of the 13 shots on goal in the match.
A Dick Dlesk-record 3,147 fans were on hand for the showdown between top 5 teams.
“That’s a huge win for RPI implications. It keeps us in touching distance in the conference, but it’s also going to be a memory that’s going to stick with these young men for the rest of their lives,” Stratford said. “To see that and see the crowd have that moment at the end, it was cool from my perspective to be 25 or 30 yards away from the chaos and enjoy the views and enjoy the scenes and see how much it meant to everyone.”
Marshall remains atop the Sun Belt with 15 points, while Central Florida is second with 13 and WVU third with 12.
“We’ve had 12 games where everything has gone our way,” Grassie said. “One game doesn’t go our way, it doesn’t mean anything. We can still win the conference and it’s all in our hands. If we take care of business, we’ll be champs. The last time we lost here, we won a National Championship. As long as this defeat hurts enough to let it be fuel for the fire, we’ll be fine.”