UB Women's Soccer Nipped By Mercy, 1-0, In ECC Championship Final
Lone Goal Of The Match Comes With 22:32 To Play In Second Half; Purple Knights Will Now Wait To See If Team Receives An NCAA At-Large Bid On Monday Night
Dobbs Ferry. N.Y.-Mercy College's MacKenzie Cochrane scored the only goal of the match off a direct free kick with 22:32 in the second half to lift the host Mavericks to a 1-0 victory over the visiting University of Bridgeport Purple Knights and the 2014 East Coast Conference Women's Soccer Championship on a cloudy and chilly Friday afternoon in Westchester County, New York. Mercy, the number 18 ranked NCAA Division II women's soccer team and number two seed in this season's ECC Championship, claims its first-ever East Coast Conference women's soccer crown and moves onto next week's NCAA Division II Championship Tournament with an overall record of 16-2-1. Bridgeport, which has reached the ECC Women's Soccer Final in each of the last three seasons and was this year's number four seed, is 13-4-2 on the year, and must wait until Monday evening at 7:00 p.m. to see if the team receives an at-large bid to this season's NCAA Championship Tournament. Friday's tilt was a rematch of 2013 ECC Women's Soccer Championship Final which Bridgeport won, 1-0. For her efforts in scoring the game-winning goal on Friday, Cochrane also received Most Outstanding Player honors in this year's ECC Women's Soccer Championship.
Mercy's goal came on a beautiful, lofting shot by Cochrane to the top left corner of the net that just eluded the outstretched finger-tips of Purple Knights' goalkeeper Kaitlin Occhipinti (Fr., Islip, N.Y.). On the day, Occhipinti made three saves. Mercy's Nicole Augustine stopped five UB shots to earn the shutout.
On the day, UB outshot Mercy, 16-6, and corner kicks finished even at two for each team.