Saint Joe’s beats Lafayette to advance to Philly Spring Cup final

Saint Joseph’s will get a chance to defend their Philly Spring Cup title on Saturday after wrapping up first place in the Don Dijulia bracket with a 3-1 win over Lafayette at Sweeney Field on Wednesday night.

The Hawks needed all three points to keep pace with Rider at the top of the bracket standings and had the first tiebreaker advantage from a head-to-head win over Rider in their first Spring Cup match.

Recent transfer Conor Clair scored early in the first half and senior Luke Johnson’s goal in the second half ended up being the game-winner for the Hawks. Cristian Oliveira added a third to give Saint Joe’s a two-goal cushion to close the game out.

“It’s a surreal moment to be able to represent my school, my friends, my coaches one last time before leaving the college game,” Johnson said after the match. “I couldn’t be happier to do it with this group of guys and hopefully we can go out and get some more hardware on Saturday.”

Johnson finished his college career in the fall with 56 appearances over his four seasons on Hawk Hill and answered the call to play when several key players went down with injuries. His experience along with that of veterans Herman Tveit-Reffsgaard and goalkeeper Cooper Jennings was key in a match where several younger players stepped in with big minutes. Underclassmen like Nick Hanushchak, Mark Mazzoni, Finn Murray, Aidan Donnelly and Mason Csapo all played key roles on the night.

“Credit to Lafayette, they are an NCAA tournament team,” said head coach Tim Mulqueen, who is entering his second season with the team. “We know they’re very good, physical and strong and we had to match that and I thought we played some really good soccer throughout the night.”

The Hawks won the Philly Spring Cup last year and are coming off a 6-7-5 season with a number of key transfers – like Clair and Rob Myrick, who is still recovering from injury – and a promising recruiting class with plenty of familiar local names. Getting back to the final to defend their title from last spring was an important goal during the spring.

“It’s great to be back in the final and hopefully we get to a final in the fall,” Mulqueen said. “Stacking these experiences up is very important for our program now that we’re trying to change the culture.”

Playing in front of a good-sized crowd on a perfect weather night under the lights at Sweeney Field, Saint Joseph’s came out fired up and were cruising when Johnson chipped in the second goal of the night.

“You go up 2 nill you think your comfortable and you lose a ball in the lights and it goes in,” Mulqueen said. “To our guys’ credit, we talk about 1.5 which is do your job and half your buddy’s if he makes a mistake and the guys lifted Coop (goalkeeper Cooper Jennings) up and Cristian scored a great goal and then I thought we defended and saw it out well.”

Saturday’s final against Lehigh will be played at 4:30 p.m. at the WSFS Bank Sportsplex. Lehigh won all three of their games in the Bill Wilkinson bracket to advance to the final. Saint Joseph’s will need to avenge a 3-2 loss at Lehigh in the fall to repeat as champions.

All eight teams will be playing on Saturday. Rider and La Salle play in the third place game at 2 p.m., Drexel and Villanova play for fifth place at 2 p.m. and Lafayette and Temple will play for 7th place at 4:30 p.m.