Courtesy Middlebury Athletic Communications

Box Score

MIDDLEBURY, Vt. – Amherst won its first NESCAC title with a 2-0 victory over defending champion Middlebury in the final of the 2008 NESCAC Men's Soccer Championship. The Lord Jeffs pick up their first title game win in four appearances, as they improve to 12-3-2 overall, earning an automatic bid to the NCAA Tournament.

The Panthers move to 13-2-2 overall in 2008 and are expected to receive an at-large bid to the NCAA’s when the pairing are announced Sunday night.

Amherst came out strong with pressure on the Panthers for the first 30 minutes of the game. The Jeffs struck 15 minutes in as Jake Duker scored his 13th goal in 16 games as he one-timed a low hard crossing pass from Nick Lynch for the goal. The assist was his team-leading ninth of the season for Lynch.

Amherst struck again just 3:51 later as Jay Heo found the back of the net for his 11th of the year. Lynch made a centering pass to Duker, whose shot hit the post and rebounded right to Heo, as he gave his team a 2-0 lead early.

Middlebury came back for the final 15 minutes of the half with some pressure in the Amherst end, but could not get on the board. Lennard Kovacs kept it a 2-0 game for the Jeffs with one save, as well as a nice deflection of a Stephen Hart shot over the crossbar.

After being outshot 5-2 in the first half, Middlebury returned the favor in the second session. The Panthers pressured the Jeffs on several occasions, including five corner kicks and one direct kick between the 68th and 71st minutes of the second half.

The Amherst defense held tough and though Middlebury threatened, the Panthers did not have any great chances to break up the shutout.

Kovacs ended the game with three saves for his fifth shutout of the season, while Brian Bush made two saves for the Panthers.

2008 NESCAC MEN’S SOCCER CHAMPIONSHIP
Quarterfinals - Sunday, November 2 at Higher Seeds
at No. 1 Middlebury 3, No. 8 Bowdoin 0
at No. 2 Amherst 2, No. 7 Wesleyan 0
at No. 3 Trinity 2, No. 6 Tufts 0
at No. 4 Williams 3, No. 5 Bates 1

Semifinals - Saturday, November 8 at Middlebury
at No. 1 Middlebury 1, No. 4 Williams 0
No. 2 Amherst 1, vs. No. 3 Trinity 0

Championship - Sunday, November 9 at Middlebury
No. 2 Amherst 2, at No. 1 Middlebury 0

2008 NESCAC MEN'S SOCCER CHAMPIONSHIP

Quarterfinals - Sunday, November 2 at Higher Seeds
12:00 p.m.
No. 8 at No. 1
No. 7 at No. 2
No. 6 at No. 3
No. 5 at No. 4

Semifinals - Saturday, November 8 at Highest Remaining Seed
11:00 a.m./1:30 p.m.
  Highest Remaining Seed vs. Lowest Remaining Seed
Remaining First Round Winners

Championship - Sunday, November 9
Semifinal Winners - 12:00 p.m.

Format
The top eight teams in the conference will qualify for the NESCAC Men's Soccer Championship.  Quarterfinal games will be conducted on Sunday, November 2, 2008 with the semifinals and championship games conducted on Saturday, November 8 and Sunday, November 9, respectively.  The tournament champion will receive an automatic bid to the NCAA Division III Championship. 

Seeding
Seeding will be based on final conference standings of round robin play. Standings will be based on team winning percentages. Ties shall count as half a win.

The 8th seed will play at the 1st seed, the 7th seed will play at the 2nd seed, the 6th seed will play at the 3rd seed, and the 5th seed will play at the 4th seed.  Teams will be re-bracketed after first round games and the lowest remaining seed will face the highest remaining seed.

Pairings
Pairings will be announced Friday, October 31.

Tie Breaking Procedures
Ties will be broken as follows:

Head-to-head result (if teams play each other more than once during the regular season, the game that appears on the league schedule will be the game that is counted).

If teams tied during the regular season, or there is a 3-way or more tie, the following tie breaking procedure will be used:

• Best record among tying teams, against one another (head-to-head).
• Most conference wins (in games that are part of the conference schedule and count toward league standings).
• Comparison of results of conference games played against top 4 teams (including all teams at the 4th spot).
• Comparison of results of conference games played against top 8 teams (including all teams at the 8th spot).
• Comparison of results of conference games played against conference teams in rank order.
• Comparisons shall be made one team at a time starting with the highest ranked team.
• If the tie remains after comparing results against the highest ranked team, the results against the next team in rank order shall be used. This process is continued until a winner is determined.
• Coin flip (or similar random action involving all tied teams).

Note: In case of ties among three or more schools, the criteria above will be applied in order until a team is (or teams are) separated.  At that point, the process begins anew (returning to the first criteria) with the remaining teams.  The process is continued until the tie is eventually broken.  In cases where only a random action will break the tie of three or more teams, the random action will be applied to all teams involved in the tie.  For example, if three teams are tied and only a random action (pulling names out of a hat) will break the tie, each name will be pulled and seeded in order of being pulled.  Also, in the event that there are two (or more) groups of teams tied at different spots in the standings and the only criteria left that can be used to break those ties is a coin flip/random action, the coin flip/random action used to break the tie of one group (to put teams in rank order) will not affect the tie breaking procedures of the other group(s) of tied teams.