University of Denver’s men’s soccer continues to ride their rocky mountain high of a season after winning both of their opening Summit League matchups. After games against Oral Roberts (ORU) and St. Thomas, they came away with two more at home wins under their belt.
While both games resulted in a victory, they had very different dynamics. The ORU game was a tightly contested battle with a final score of 3-2, while the matchup against St. Thomas ended in a decisive 5-0 blowout.
On Oct. 2, Denver went head-to-head with ORU, their first Summit League opponent for the year. They started strong in the first half with a dominating offensive performance. Redshirt senior defender Ronan Wynne pinballed the ball into the net after only seven minutes of play. He celebrated his first goal of the season with a backflip.
There was good communication among the players on the field shown by many scoring chances and seven shots on goal in the first half.
The next goal came from redshirt junior defender Trevor Wright early in the second half, which doubled Denver’s advantage.
After Wright’s goal, ORU began to step up offensively and answered with a goal of their own, which left them trailing DU by one goal.
In the 80th minute, senior forward Oje Ofunrein extended the lead again for Denver. The play started with a missed shot by Ofunrein that went wide of the goal, allowing him to gain back possession of the ball and move toward the center of the goalie zone to shoot it straight into the back of the net.
ORU was able to score again two minutes later with a goal by senior forward Luis Flores, but it was not enough to catch up. The game ended with a score of 3-2 in favor of DU.
Three days later, Denver was back at home in another Summit League matchup against St. Thomas, which ended up being their first five plus goal performance of the season.
DU dominated their offensive zone well in the first half of the game. In the 19th minute, Ofunrein scored the first goal, his fifth goal of the season, with assists by redshirt junior defender Ian Smith and senior midfielder Sam Bassett.
St. Thomas held up strong defensively, despite Denver’s multiple scoring chances throughout the first half. Twenty minutes after the first goal was scored, sophomore forward Tyler Schommer was able to kick the ball high right to give DU a two-goal lead. Smith had another assist on the play, alongside Wright.
The second half saw more action, with Denver scoring less than two minutes in by redshirt freshman defender Ian Welch, with assists by Bassett and Schommer.
Schommer went on to score his second goal of the game only ten minutes after his assist, coming head-to-head with St. Thomas’s goalie in an attempt to fake him out and get behind him to kick the ball low into the net.
St. Thomas lost their momentum from there, making simple mistakes that Denver took advantage of to get the upper hand.
Two and a half minutes later, DU retaliated again with their fifth and final goal of the game, scored by Bassett. Wright recorded his second assist of the night and Smith registered his third assist of the game, to bring his total to eight assists on the season.
Denver kept a strong offense throughout both games, proving their number one spot in the conference and high rankings in the NCAA polls.
The team dropped their final non-conference matchup to No.1 Pittsburgh on Oct. 7, 2-0. Their next home game will be in Summit League play the rest of the season and goes up against Omaha in their next match on Oct. 16 at the University of Denver Soccer Stadium.
