KENOSHA, Wis. – The Carthage College Red Men avenged a double overtime loss in the regular season against Wheaton College from a week ago, topping the Thunder in the College Conference of Illinois and Wisconsin Tournament semifinals at Art Keller Field on Wednesday night, 3-0.
 
The second-seeded Red Men improve to 11-8-1 on the year, while third-seeded Thunder's tournament comes to an end at 10-7-1.
 
"Wheaton has a system, and they stick to it," said head coach Steve Domin after the win.  "Frankly this was not a 3-0 match, but a good battle between two teams wanting to earn something.  If you told me we would have won 6-2, or lost 2-3, I would have said fair enough… I have to give strong credit to our men.  Although a back and forth affair in the second half, we really took care of our opportunities and made big kid plays.  I think what most people forget is that our earlier loss to them in the regular season kept us from sharing a league title essentially.  And we had that as motivation."
 
High pressure by the Red Men opened the scoring in the 22nd minute, as Alberto Eloyza, Kevin Mahoney and Ivan Esquivel forced a turnover in the Wheaton backline.  Once the Red Men settled the failed clear, Esquivel slotted a pass across the top of the 18 to Adrian Herrera who blasted a low shot to the right of the goalkeeper for the 1-0 lead.
 
Wheaton looked to tie it after that but Niko Mavrogiannis made four first half against the nine Thunder shots to keep a clean sheet through the first half.
 
The Red Men took advantage of another Wheaton miscue late in the half when the Thunder turned it over at midfield forced by Alberto Eloyza was played through beyond the backline to a cutting Esquivel, who snuck it under the keeper for the 2-0 lead.
 
Carthage added to the lead in the 63rd minute with their third goal after Kevin Mahoney took the ball from midfield to the end touchline, beat a pair of defenders, laid the ball off to Alberto Eloyza, who found Jorge Triana at the penalty spot, where Triana settled the ball and shot it off the inside of the left post for the third Red Men goal.
 
Wheaton continued to press late to try and get on the board with 15 second half shots but the Carthage defense of Nicholas Messineo, Matt Rojel, Jeff Montemayor and Kevin Reilly held them to just four that reached Niko, who finished with eight saves in the game.  The eight saves in the win matches his career-high and earned him the seventh clean sheet of the season.
 
"At moments when we were sleeping, Niko came up big, huge," noted Domin.  "When we were in front of the goal, we took shots which counted, not wasting chances.  Our guys stuck to the plan.  We were really okay with Wheaton's width and having shots from bad positions.  It has been an effective strategy here as of late."
 
Next up for the Red Men, Carthage will play the top-seeded North Park University Vikings on Saturday in the 2018 CCIW Championship match. The game, which will be played at the Holmgren Athletic Complex, will be played at 3:00 p.m.
 
"We were not full strength for a good stretch in the middle of the year when we played a few teams and North Park was one of them.  They attack in waves and we will have to be ready right away.   The interesting things is we do the same thing to other teams, so should prove to be a great CCIW Championship final.  We had their number for a few years in a row a couple seasons past, and they have had ours the last year and half.  Bring your seat belt."