PLU's Season Comes To A Close on Friday

THIS WEEK: Pacific Lutheran hosts Linfield, Friday, 1:30 p.m.

SEASON COMES TO A CLOSE: With Pacific Lutheran's season coming to a close this week, the Lutes still hope to finish strong. At best, the Lutes can finish fourth in the conference, yet they are still showing a commitment to a strong finish with back-to-back wins over Willamette and George Fox this past weekend. They are scheduled to host the Linfield Wildcats in their final match of the season this Friday.

SCORING BALANCE: This season has been quite the change for the Lutes, what with the significant losses of the 2007 Northwest Conference Offensive (Michael Ferguson) and Defensive (Brian Lubeck) Players of the Year. When Ferguson graduated, he took with him 49 career goals. Alluding to Ferguson, head coach John Yorke said at the beginning of the season, "We won't have any 15-goal scorers. We better have four of five guys that get five to seven goals each." While there has been balance in the goal scoring department, the Lutes simply haven't scored as high a number of goals as they have needed to get a few more wins and a few less losses. This year's top goal scorer is senior Derek Karamatic with six, but after that goal scoring drops off to four from Ricky Morales and three each from Surafel Worku and Spencer Augustin. The good news is that only two of the Lutes who scored this year are graduating, Karamatic and Trevor McDonald. So, the Lutes end the season with the hope of a bright future.

HISTORY REPEATS ITSELF: For the second time this season, the Lutes defeated both the Willamette Bearcats (2-0) and the George Fox Bruins (5-1).

SECOND TIME AGAINST WILLAMETTE: Lutes Ricky Morales and Derek Karamatic scored the goals for PLU. Morales scored the first goal for the Lutes when his 11-yard shot found the lower left corner of the net just 8:47 in the match. PLU took that 1-0 lead into the second half, and it was in that period that the Lutes really put the pressure on Willamette. Karamatic got the Lutes' second goal on a rebound following a goalkeeper save, knocking the ball into the lower right corner of the goal. Willamette goalkeeper Mark Bennett performed exceptionally with 11 of his 12 saves coming in the final 45 minutes. However, even with Bennett in good form, it wasn't enough to keep the visiting Pacific Lutheran Lutes from earning a 2-0 Northwest Conference victory over the Bearcats.

SECOND TIME AGAINST GEORGE FOX: The Lutes has their best offensive performance since their 6-2 victory over Saint Mary's (Minn.) at the beginning of the season. Derek Karamatic picked up a pair of goals against the Bruins to give him three for the weekend. Other PLU goal scorers were Spencer Augustin, Chad Kearns and Scott Parsons. Pacific Lutheran expanded its 2-0 halftime lead in the 50th minute when Augustin took a cross from Lance Davis and finished for his third goal of the campaign. That's when Karamatic got into the act. He tallied his fifth goal of the season in the 71st minute with the assist going to Ricky Morales, and after a George Fox goal 45 seconds later from Keith Marshall, Karamatic ended the scoring in the 74th minute, knocking in the rebound of his own shot.

- PLU -

By James Odan, student assistant