Pitt men's soccer blanked by No. 13 Indiana in College Cup semifinals

The NCAA Tournament semifinal meeting Friday night between Pitt and No. 13 Indiana saw two soccer programs with very different pedigrees – the blue-blood Hoosiers and the new-blood Panthers – do battle for a shot to advance to Monday’s national championship.

In the end, blue bested new, 2-0, in the College Cup match at WakeMed Soccer Park in Cary, N.C., with Indiana now set to take on No. 3 Syracuse in the hopes of winning its ninth national title.

The Hoosiers head into the national championship game having not given up a single goal through four games played in the NCAA Tournament.

By the end of the first half against Indiana, the Panthers could attest to that stinginess firsthand, with good looks, and shots on goal in general, few and far between.

Indiana’s Ryan Wittenbrink, who entered Friday night as his team’s leader in goals with nine, drew first blood, beating Pitt goalie Joe van der Sar in the 13th minute of the first half and finding the back of the net on a rebound of his own penalty kick.

With just 20 seconds to play before halftime, the Hoosiers increased their lead to 2-0 thanks to a goal courtesy of Tommy Mihalic.

“Certainly, the first goal hurt us, but the second goal killed us,” Pitt coach Jay Vidovich said after the loss. “It was a really tough hole for us to climb out of.”

Not that the Panthers didn’t try.

About 15 minutes into the second half, Bertin Jacquesson and Jackson Gilman registered shots within 29 seconds of one another, with the former’s attempt getting blocked and Hoosiers goalie J.T. Harms denying Gilman’s.

However, undoubtedly the best offensive opportunity for Pitt came in the 30th minute of the final half, when Panthers leading scorer Valentin Noel floated a well-placed pass into the orbit of Jacquesson, whose redirected header was impressively fended off by the diving Harms.

For Pitt, Friday evening was a repeat of its 2020 College Cup semifinals matchup against Indiana, which posted a 1-0 victory before falling to Marshall in the national championship that year.

After the game, midfielder Jackson Walti recalled a prediction he made about the Panthers program in the aftermath of that disappointing loss.

“At the same press conference two years ago, I said Pitt soccer is here to stay and I think we proved that,” he said. “I think long after we leave, our program’s still going to be solid.”

While the Panthers went on to be eliminated in the quarterfinals round in 2021, the seniors who have played their final game in a Pitt jersey – Walti, van der Sar and Noel included – can take pride in having appeared in two College Cup semifinals in three years.

Pitt’s 2020 and 2022 campaigns mark the deepest the Panthers have penetrated into the NCAA Tournament in men’s soccer program history, which dates to 1954.

Before 2019, the last time Pitt had even made the tournament was 1965.

Thus, while this season featured a less-than-ideal 3-2-3 record in ACC league play, the Panthers went 12-5-5 overall, defeating six ranked teams in the process, including No. 1 Kentucky in the third round of the NCAA Tournament on Dec. 3.

“We didn’t do Plan A this year,” Vidovich said. “We really adapted to help ourselves. We played against some really good teams who challenged us all the time. We didn’t always have success, but the guys kept growing from it.”

Vidovich, whose leadership has guided the Panthers to four of their six NCAA Tournaments, will work with a reshuffled deck next season.

But for him as well as his outgoing seniors, Friday’s result generated a poignant feeling that was hard to escape.

“We’re competitors – we want to win and we want to win it all,” Noel said. “That’s the plan that we set up this summer when we all started. …We’re proud of the effort, but we knew we had more in the bag. (There’s) a lot of frustration.”