Blast, Down 2 Goals in Final Minute, Shocks Sockers

Paul Dougherty sat in a silent Sockers’ locker room Monday night. It was just minutes after the Baltimore Blast’s come-from-way-behind 4-3 overtime victory in Game 1 of the Major Indoor Soccer League championship series at Baltimore Arena.

Having scored a goal and assisted on another, Dougherty, a midfielder, could have been the happy hero.

Instead, he had reason to show no emotion, stating matter-of-factly that this type of finish is typical in a MISL game.

“Indoor soccer is so unpredictable,” he said. “You know there’s always a chance that that can happen.”

It happened this way:

The Sockers were on their way to victory, leading, 3-1, with a minute to play.

Four minutes earlier, the Blast had pulled its goalie in favor of a sixth attacker. With 54 seconds remaining, Blast midfielder Kai Haaskivi sent a crossing pass to Billy Ronson, who knocked the ball in with his chest. Sockers 3, Blast 2. The crowd began to stir.

Eleven seconds later, Socker forward Steve Zungul committed the team’s sixth foul, giving the Blast a one-man advantage on the power play.

And 36 seconds after that, the crowd of 6,539 had cause to go bananas as forward Domenic Mobilio headed in the tying goal. Just seven seconds remained in regulation.

Then, not surprisingly, the Blast rode its new-found emotion through overtime, winning on Ronson’s left-footer from Bruce Savage 7:02 into the period.

The Sockers will do their best to salvage what’s left of the wreckage here tonight at 4:35 in Game 2.

Socker Coach Ron Newman isn’t sure what to expect.

“What do you say?” he asked. “There was a game that was ours all the way. Incredible. Absolutely incredible. That should have been a five- or six-to-one game.”

There were explanations why it wasn’t. Midfielder Waad Hirmez, usually a reliable finisher, blew a short-range open-net opportunity with just more than a minute remaining. That goal would have given the Sockers a three-goal advantage.

“It was a nightmare,” Hirmez said. “When open-net goals don’t go in, obviously that’s telling you something. I have no excuses for that.”

Kevin Crow said the Sockers made at least five mental errors in the final minute, possibly the biggest of which was collapsing too closely to their own goal on defense, allowing the Blast to attack. That helped spoil an otherwise solid performance by the Socker defense, particularly goalie Victor Nogueira.

“It was a picture-perfect game until the last minute,” Crow said. “It’s our own nightmare. We caused it ourselves.”

With some help. Credit the Blast with doing what it needed to do on a night when little was going right. Make no mistake about it. The Sockers played the better game. That’s as scary for them as it is encouraging for Baltimore.

“We were off our game tonight,” Baltimore Coach Kenny Cooper said. “This is the first championship series for some of these guys and they were nervous.”

The game clipped along ever so smoothly for the Sockers for 59 minutes. Dougherty had a nice goal to open the scoring. Zungul scored after the Blast had tied the score, 1-1. And forward Zoran Karic made up for an earlier missed penalty kick by drilling in a shot past diving Blast goalie Scott Manning early in the fourth quarter.

But all that was left when it was over were two different viewpoints of how a game like this is won. Newman calls it kissing the Blarney stone. That doesn’t really bother Cooper.

“Whatever you want to call it,” he said. “The bottom line is we’re one game up in this series.”

Cooper gave it a stab, though.

“I call it perseverance,” he said.

Still, Ronson admitted this victory was maybe a little special, slightly out of the ordinary.

“Maybe the big man upstairs is looking after us a little bit,” he said, smiling. “That might be it. Who knows?”

No matter who gets the credit, the Sockers are sure of one thing. They’re frustrated. And a little unsure about what lies ahead, particularly since they’re missing offensive leader Branko Segota, who is home rehabilitating a hamstring injury.

Newman went so far to say: “That might have been the championship right there, when you think about it.”

Remember also, this Socker team isn’t known for being so terrific in the second game of a back-to-back pair.

Said Crow: “We’d better play all the young guys with the legs tomorrow.”