The No. 4 Young Harris Mountain Lions escaped a furious second half comeback by the Lee men's soccer team with a 3-2 victory over the Flames on Tuesday evening at the Lee Soccer Field.
The contest was a tale of two halves as the Flames looked overmatched in the first 45 falling behind 3-0 at the intermission before bouncing back with a spirited second half effort against the highly-ranked Georgia club.
Lee was out shot 12-3 in the opening half but stormed out of the locker and out shot YHC, 6-1 in the second half while tallying two goals.
Senior Jake Brown made things interesting as he powered past a defender and fired a shot into the box that ricocheted off another defender and into the back of the net to cut the margin to just one with two minutes remaining.
The Mountain Lions would survive the final 90 seconds to improve to a perfect 5-0 on the season. The loss drops the Flames to 2-2-1 on the year.
Freshman Will Carter got Lee on the board with his first career goal in the 74
th minute as he drilled home a score after a deflection from Samaan Williams' shot set him up at point-blank range.
"I thought we played really tentative in the first half and let them dictate the game," noted Potteiger. "We didn't do anything different tactically in the second half I just told the boys you can play with these guys and we are going to play with these guys but don't come out of the locker room until you believe that. Certainly none of us are happy with the loss but we feel like we can play with anybody in the country and that feeling will serve us well as we head into conference play so I was proud of our second half performance tonight."
The Mountain Lions got the scoring started in the 21
st minute as Carlos Gomez hammered a ball into the top left corner of the goal just out of the reach of the outstretched arms of Lee keeper Daniel Hrenko.
Mikie Rowe made it 2-0 Young Harris at the 30 minute mark as he struck for his ninth goal of the season. Rowe is second in the nation in goals scored so far this season.
Seba Andreassen tallied the final score for the visitors on a 1-timer off a cross from Mehdy Hidane.
Hrenko was credited with five saves for the Flames while keeping the high-powered Mountain Lions off the scoreboard in the second half.
Young Harris goalkeeper, Alex Iglesias registered one save in earning the victory.
Coach Potteiger's club will get back to action on Saturday night at the Lee Soccer Field as they open up Gulf South Conference play against rival Shorter University at 7 p.m.
"It's Saturday night under the lights, it's Shorter, it's our conference opener we will be ready to go," Potteiger said. "We hope the crowd comes out in force because it's always a big game when we play Shorter."
Â
Â
