Greedy's heroics earn Capers a spot in CIS semifinals

Ian Greedy’s goal in the second overtime period pushed the Cape Breton University Capers through to the semifinals of the Canadian Interuniversity Sport men’s soccer championship.

His successful scoring drive came with less than a minute to play in the Caper’s quarter-final matchup against Ontario champion McMaster Marauders, Thursday in Victoria, B.C.

“It was off a corner kick,” Greedy told the Cape Breton Post. “The defender headed it out and I was standing at the top of the box. It landed on my left foot and I just cracked it to the bottom right corner.”

The scoring chance came just minutes after Greedy had hit the crossbar in an overtime period that produced numerous, unsuccessful scoring chances for the CBU team.

“We felt the goal would come at some point. We’ve been in those situations before and came back. We played really well tonight.”

Saint Mary’s and Alberta also advanced to the next round of play.

Cape Breton will now play the winner of the Montreal/Victoria match, which did not finish until early this morning.

The semifinal is set for an 11 p.m. start tonight.

In Thursday’s quarter-final, Cape Breton and McMaster played tight defence in the first half with a slight edge in play given to the Capers. However, the game remained scoreless after 45 minutes.

McMaster struck first in the second half when Anthony Costa beat Capers keeper Andrew Murphy.

Cape Breton tied it up in the 76th minute when Keishen Bean took an Andrew Rigby pass and found himself with plenty of room in front of the McMaster goal.

The strike off his right foot was his 17th goal of the season.

“I’m pretty confident in the strikers we have,” said Capers head coach Robbie Chiasson. “We always felt that even if we were down we could come back.”

Cape Breton pressed the play after the tying goal and were rewarded with some dangerous scoring chances, but the game remained tied after 90 minutes, setting the stage for a pair of 15-minute overtime periods.

Despite chances on both sides there was no scoring in the first period.

The Capers applied a tremendous amount of pressure late in the second overtime period before Greedy scored the game winner.

“Nothing like waiting until the last minute to do it,” joked Chiasson. “We deserved the win, but it just took a really long time to do it.”

Today’s winners will move on to Sunday’s gold medal final. Losing teams will play for the bronze.