With the help of forward
Matt Friesen and goalie
Adam Liszewski, the University of Colorado at Colorado Springs tied 2-2 with No. 15-ranked Metro State Friday afternoon at Mountain Lion Stadium.
The Roadrunners (4-1-1, 1-0-1 Rocky Mountain Athletic Conference) have dominated the Mountain Lions in recent years, winning the past nine matches between the two teams. The last time UCCS (2-4-1, 0-2-1 RMAC) hasn't seen a loss from Metro State was back in Sept. 7, 2003, when the Mountain Lions won 2-0.
"We knew that if we're healthy and we stay as a team and battle, we're going to come out with positive results," said UCCS coach Henry Ellis. "That's exactly what happened today and fortunately it was against a top 25 team in the country."
The Mountain Lions got off to a slow start, allowing the first goal within the first 15 minutes of the game. Metro State's Ola Sandquist passed the ball through the defense to find Kellen Johnson, who deflected the ball off of the hands of Liszewski to make it 1-0.
Twelve minutes later, Roadrunner Kellen Johnson passed the ball through the Mountain Lion defense to Mike Martinez to score the second goal for Metro State with 18:04 remaining in the first half.
"The first half we started off a little slow, a little sluggish, (and) it took us a while to kind of get into it," said Friesen. "Halftime we really got fired up and came back out just played a lot harder, got stuck in, and then snuck in a few goals and got back in it."
The second half was a different story for the Mountain Lions. Nineteen minutes into the second half and after a Metro State foul, UCCS was able to set up a set play that started with a free kick from
Jaron Stewart to find Friesen, who kicked it into the left corner of the net to make it 2-1.
Nine minutes later, after another foul by Metro State, Stewart was again able to find Friesen for a header past the Roadrunner's goalie Ryan Vickery to tie the game at 2-2.
"It felt good to score," said Friesen who got a career-high two goals Friday. "We needed somebody to step up and I felt like that needed to be me today, so I just tried to do what I could to get them in."
Doing so would send the game into two overtimes where the UCCS defense would hold onto the tie.
The Mountain Lion defense was anchored by Liszewski (2-4-1), who had a career-high 14 saves to tie for second in the UCCS records book for most saves per game.
"(Liszewski's) a big piece of our puzzle and if Adam plays strong it's going to be difficult for any team to come in and beat us," said Ellis. "He has definitely been training really hard (and) he's improved so much."
Vickery (4-1-1) had five saves for Metro State to earn the tie.
