NCAA Men’s Soccer Tournament First Round Scoreboard: Pitt will face Northern Illinois

The Pitt Panthers now know who they’ll be facing on Sunday in the NCAA tournament’s second round.

Diego Maynez scored twice inside the opening 14 minutes and Martin Sanchez stopped a second half penalty kick as the Northern Illinois University men’s soccer team topped Oakland University, 2-1, on Thursday night in the NCAA Tournament First Round at the NIU Soccer and Track & Field Complex.

The win was NIU’s 15th of the season, tying a school record set in both 2006 and 2011, as NIU improves to 15-2-2. The Huskies will now face fifth-seeded Panthers on Sunday, Nov. 21 (4 p.m. kickoff).

“The priority was to get through and get to Sunday’s game,” said NIU head coach Ryan Swan.

“We have done that, so we have to be happy. I thought we were really good at the start of the game and then our level dropped. We weren’t quite as sharp as we should have been in the final third and it ended up being a much closer contest than we would have liked.”

Look for match preview in the coming days here on PSN. 

Elsewhere, College Cup semifinalist a year ago, North Carolina were taken to the limit by Loyola Maryland in the first round of the DI men’s soccer championship, but they prevailed in penalty kicks.

The Tar Heels kept their composure a little more from the spot, prevailing 4-2 in the shootout to advance to the second round. UNC won the national title in 2001 and 2011.

Elsewhere, late goals propelled Long Island (89′), Virginia Tech (72′) and Wake Forest (66′) to wins and berths in the second round.

The ACC, featured in our article on Thursday, went 3-1 in the first round, as Louisville fell to Bowling Green, 1-0.

Here are all the scores from Thursday’s first round action.

• Final | St. John’s 1, Princeton 0
• Final | LIU 1, Maryland
• Final (PKs)| North Carolina 0 (4), Loyola (MD) 0(2)
• Final | Villanova 1, Vermont 0
• Final | Virginia Tech 2, Campbell 1
• Final | Wake Forest 2, Mercer 1
• Final | Bowling Green 1, Louisville 0
• Final (2OT) | Santa Clara 2, Akron 1
• Final | Georgia State 1, Charlotte 0
• Final | Hofstra 4, Lipscomb 2
• Final | Creighton 1, Missouri State 0
• Final | Northern Illinois 2, Oakland 1
• Final | Providence 2, Marist 0
• Final | Denver 1, Grand Canyon 0
• Final | Portland 3, Seattle 2
• Final | UC Santa Barbara 1, UCLA 2