University of North Carolina Ashville Athletics
Fall Flashback – Men’s Soccer Denies Davidson
09.23.2020 | Men's Soccer
Steve Adlard's last win as head coach of the UNC Asheville men's soccer program was one of the biggest victories in school history.
The match came in the quarterfinals of the 1991 Big South Conference Tournament. Adlard's club would be the seventh seed in the tournament and take on second-seeded Davidson on the Wildcats' home field.
Davidson in the Big South? It was for a little while. The Wildcat athletic program competed in the Big South for two years after leaving the Southern Conference. Ironically, the SoCon would take them back two years later when the league added Georgia Southern.
Davidson had a very good soccer program in the early 90's. They played at Richardson Field and a year earlier, the school had been awarded the College Cup (the Final Four for men's soccer) for three years starting in 1992.
While the Wildcats had a solid program, they did not dominate the Big South Conference in soccer. Davidson had finished in second place the year before in the regular season and advanced to the league championship game in Asheville before being whipped by Coastal Carolina, 2-0.
In Davidson's first game as a Big South member, the Wildcats came to Greenwood Field with a lot of confidence in 1990 but fell to the Bulldogs, 2-1.
The 1991 season was a strange one for Asheville. They had graduated a big chunk of a successful 1990 team that just missed playing the Wildcats for the 1990 title. The Bulldogs had lost an excruciating heart-breaker to Coastal Carolina in the semi-finals, 2-1 in overtime. CCU scored two late goals to advance to the championship game.
Adlard believed he had brought in a talented recruiting class that could pick up where the Bulldogs had left off the year before. But to begin the season, Asheville could not score. The Dogs lost their first five matches of the year and didn't score a goal in any of them. Four of the matches were 1-0 losses with goals scored against the Dogs in the final 20 minutes of the match.
But led by midfielder Jonny Alexander and forward Scott Mosier, the Bulldogs began to score some goals and win some matches. The Dogs were inconsistent but playing better.
Asheville dropped a 2-0 decision at Davidson late in the season before the Dogs found some consistency. Adlard's club went into Buies Creek and edged Campbell, 2-1 to earn its first ever victory in the Creek. The Bulldogs finished the regular season with a thrilling 3-2 victory at Georgia State and then slipped past Western Kentucky, 1-0 in the final home game of the year at Greenwood Field.
But the poor start had pushed Asheville to seventh place in Big South Conference play, the lowest finish ever for a Bulldog team at that time. And it would mean facing a Davidson team hungry to win a Big South championship in its final year as a league member.
Asheville entered the game with some confidence as it had won three of its last four games after the 2-0 loss to Davidson. The Dogs had a solid defense led by freshman Andrew DiLizio. Rookie goalkeeper Steve McCullough had been in the net for Asheville all season and played like a senior all year.
The Wildcats had a high-scoring attack but Asheville would keep them at bay for the first half. Asheville had a couple of chances but could not score.
In the second half, the Dogs began to control play and earn some scoring opportunities. Asheville would finally break through in the 70th minute. Reserve forward Dano Holcomb, who only seemed to score important goals, knocked in a shot from 10 yards out to give Asheville the lead at 1-0. Holcomb, who didn't play soccer in high school, had joined the Bulldog program after a successful place-kicking career at Tryon HS in nearby Tryon.
Dano's goal had given Asheville the lead but could it hold on? The Wildcats did not want to end their season at the hands of the Bulldogs. They pressed forward in a big way, but McCullough was up the task every time.
However, disaster struck in the 88th minute. A ball went into the Asheville goal area and took a funny bounce. It hit a Bulldog defender in the arm. The officials spotted the infraction and awarded Davidson a penalty kick.
It had been a frustrating season in so many ways. Would this be the way it would end for Asheville?
McCullough calmly came over to the Bulldog bench during the stoppage in play and asked Adlard, a former goalkeeper himself, where he thought the Davidson forward would shoot.
The Bulldog coach told him he thought he would shoot to the left. They talked and McCullough appeared ready for the challenge after the chat.
The Davidson forward shot to the left. McCullough dove just in time to knock it over the goal. The final 60 seconds of the match took forever but the Wildcats could get no closer to the goal and Asheville had the upset win.
The victory would mean even more the next season. With most of that same Davidson team returning, the Wildcats would win the Southern Conference championship and then pull off three wins in the NCAA Tournament. The final victory, an overtime triumph at N.C. State, sent Davidson home to the College Cup which it would host. They wouldn't win the national championship but they hosted and competed for it which very few programs do.
Asheville's win in 1991 would send it to the semifinals for the fourth straight year. And once again heartbreak hit the Bulldogs in Adlard's final match as head coach. They would face third-seeded Winthrop. The game was scoreless until the second overtime period when the Eagles finally found the back of the net.
There was no golden goal back then and the Bulldogs quickly responded. Freshman Tye Warren took the ensuing kick-off and went down and scored to knot the game at 1-1.
The match would go to penalty kicks. Five different times, the Bulldogs were a save away or a goal away from winning. But each time they would be denied. Winthrop would finally edge Asheville, 10-9 on PK's.
As bad as the previous season's loss had been to Coastal Carolina, this one hurt even more. So close but yet so far.
And it would be the final game for Adlard, as well. He was hired by Marquette University to lead its program the following January. Adlard would take McCullough with him to Marquette where he would become an All-American goalkeeper for the Warriors.
However, on one November night on a field that would host the College Cup the following year, the Bulldogs had earned one of the greatest victories in school history.
