Wildcats Fall to Gardner-Webb in Season Opener, 3-1

Friday, August 26

DAVIDSON

7:00 p.m.

Davidson College Athletics

0-1-0

GARDNER-WEBB

1-0-0

Gardner-Webb

Davidson

Photo by: Tim Cowie - DavidsonPhotos.com

Wildcats Fall to Gardner-Webb in Season Opener, 3-1

8/26/2016 9:31:00 PM | Men's Soccer

Box Score

Box Score (PDF)
DavidsonPhotos.com

DAVIDSON, N.C. – Ali Al-Gashamy scored a pair of goals to lead Gardner-Webb to a 3-1 victory over Davidson in both team's season opener Friday evening at Alumni Stadium.

Despite the setback, the Wildcats finished with a 17-9 advantage in shots and blanked the Runnin' Bulldogs in corners, 11-0.

Gardner-Webb (1-0-0) wasted little time grabbing the early advantage as Severin Soerlie scored off a loose ball 2:03 into the contest.

In the 24th minute, Al-Gashamy extended the Bulldogs' lead to 2-0 off a free kick from about 20 yards out that curled just inside the far post.

Davidson (0-1-0), which hadn't dropped an opener since 1998, finally got on the board just prior to intermission when Christian Fechter put away a Nathan Marder flick into the box off a corner kick.

Just prior to Fechter's third career strike, the Wildcats' Danny Davis had a one-on-one opportunity turned away by Matthew Swan. Davis also had an excellent chance late in the second half.

Al-Gashamy's second goal of the match came at the 55:35 mark to push the Bulldogs' margin back to two. The senior forward nearly finished with a hat trick, but hit the left post with just under five minutes to play.

Maxi Pragnell had a great scoring chance midway through the second half, but his header off a free kick was hit directly at the Gardner-Webb keeper.

Both goalkeepers finished with four saves.

Coming into the contest, the Wildcats were 11-0-4 in season openers under head coach Matt Spear.

Up Next
Davidson will travel to former Southern Conference rival Wofford Monday for a 7 p.m. kick-off in Spartanburg.

Coach Spear's Postgame Comments
"It's a disappointing result to not win at home on opening day. But it's one game, and there are many more to come and we can certainly learn a lot from tonight.

Getting in a hole so early and then falling further behind 2-0 made the game much harder than it should have been. Their goals came off set pieces – first, we don't need to foul to give them chances and next we must handle the ensuing plays better.

We seized the momentum as the first half wore on and pulled one back on a well-deserved goal by Christian Fechter. And then we started the second half on the front foot. But then their third goal scored against the run of play on a deflection was very costly.

To get 16 shots and so many corner kicks demonstrated we created a lot of chances – we just needed to capitalize better, and of course be sharper in the back.

We played 20 players on a hot, humid night because we were chasing the game. One advantage of that is that we got to see a lot of players, and we were able to spread the minutes around, to help our recovery and next steps for Monday's match."