Ricky Lopez-Espin celebrates one of his two goals on the day vs. Drake (Spomer/WBR)
Ricky Lopez-Espin might want to visualize every opponent Creighton faces from here on out as the Drake Bulldogs. The sophomore forward scored two goals on Sunday afternoon as the Bluejays began their road to the College Cup with a dominant 5-1 win over Drake in the second round of the NCAA Tournament. The goals gave Lopez-Espin five scores for the season, three of which have come against the Bulldogs after he scored the game-winner against them in the 85th minute back on October 6.
“It doesn’t really matter about the opponent, it’s just the mindset,” Lopez-Espin said.
Check out our photo gallery from Creighton’s 5-1 win!
When he faced Drake the first time in early October, he made no secret about wanting to play well against the Bulldogs. After all, it was on their field in 2014 where his season came to an end after a hard tackle resulted in a torn anterior cruciate ligament, a torn medial collateral ligament, and several months of grueling rehab. Then it was about redemption. On Sunday afternoon all that mattered to Lopez-Espin was survive and advance.
“It’s do or die now, so you have to play like it’s your last game,” he said. “If it’s Coastal Carolina or UNC it doesn’t matter. We have to come out the same way, and move the ball up the same way, and be hungry.”
After outshooting Drake 21-2 in the second half in their first meeting this season, the Bluejays picked up right where they left off after the opening kick-off on Sunday. Like an avalanche of offense, the goals came quickly and didn’t stop until the Bulldogs were buried. In the ninth minute of the match, Lopez-Espin played a ball up the left flank to two-time reigning Big East Offensive Player of the Year, Fabian Herbers. Creighton’s superstar striker beat Drake goalkeeper Darrin MacLeod to the end line and played a ball back into the box where Lopez-Espin finished it off with a soft left-footed touch to put the Bluejays up 1-0.
In the 17th minute, sophomore Noah Franke played a ball to the middle of the pitch from the right flank. It was redirected by senior Timo Pitter to a charging Ricardo Perez, who didn’t hesitate and blasted it into the back of the net from well outside the 18-yard box to put Creighton up 2-0.
The lead held through halftime and grew to 3-0 in the 65th minute when a collision in the box created a free ball along the right side. Lopez-Espin made a near post run, beat MacLeod to the ball and chipped the Drake goalkeeper for his first career two-goal game as a Bluejay. With the match seemingly in hand, the sophomore forward checked out a few minutes after his second goal to a well-deserved ovation from the home crowd of 2,212 at Morrison Stadium.
After a regular season of ups and downs in his performance, a meeting with his head coach lit a bit of a fire under the talented sophomore.
“I knew I hadn’t had the best regular season, so I met with [head coach Elmar Bolowich] and we talked about it,” Lopez-Espin said. “I just had to change my mindset, just really be hungry and go after it. That kind of pushed me a little bit. I set little goals in training every day and got rewarded today, so hopefully I can keep moving forward.”
Even at the lower points of Lopez-Espin’s performance throughout the season, Bolowich didn’t lose sight of what his young striker was returning from, nor what he could become going forward once his mental game met up with his physical abilities.
“All season long he struggled,” Bolowich said. “He had his injury and had to find a way to come back and get into the rhythm. There was a lot of hesitation. Talent is one thing, and then there is what you do with it. That’s what we had to talk about. I just said, ‘hey listen, this is what you really can be.’ Then when he expresses what his goals are, then you have to see that it is realistic to achieve. With the talent level and the ability he has it’s obviously a realistic thing to do, but with the way he was playing it was not; there was a disconnect. We had to find the connection, and to his credit today he found the connection.”
Espin-Lopez and Herbers celebrate the win (Spomer/WBR)
Even with a three-goal lead and fewer than 25 minutes remaining between the Bluejays and a date with the winner of North Carolina and Coastal Carolina awaiting them in the third round, they didn’t take their foot off the gas. Goal number four came just shy of four minutes later when Herbers played a cross to freshman midfielder Evan Waldrep near the right corner of the box. Waldrep took his shot and spun the ball past a diving attempt by MacLeod and inside the far post with 21:38 remaining on the clock.
Drake finally got on the board in the 81st minute when sophomore forward Steven Enna went top shelf to beat Creighton senior goalkeeper Connor Sparrow. The ball came in just under the cross bar to cut the Bluejays’ lead to 4-1, but in case the result was still in doubt, Creighton erased that in the 89th minute when Herbers played a ball up the middle to Pitter, who beat MacLeod with a shot into the lower left corner of the goal to give the Bluejays a 5-1 lead with 1:14 left to play. With assists on goals by Lopez-Espin and Waldrep prior, the through ball on Pitter’s strike gave Herbers — a leading candidate for this season Hermann Trophy as the top player in college soccer — a hat trick of helpers with three assists, which tied an NCAA Tournament record for a single match.
Fabian Herbers is one of the leading candidates for the Hermann Trophy (Spomer/WBR)
“I thought we played a fantastic game today,” Creighton head coach Elmar Bolowich said. “We came out ready and took control of the game from the start, and shared the ball very well. A lot of unselfishness on the field. The guys seemingly had fun with it, and we got the goals to go into halftime 2-0, which gave us a good cushion. Then fortunately we kept up the pressure in the second half to get a few more and put the game out of reach.”
After beginning the season with a 15-match winning streak, Creighton’s potent offense hit some speed bumps in the closing weeks of the regular season as they dropped three of their final five matches, including two to Big East regular season and conference tournament champion Georgetown. But the Bluejays regrouped before facing Drake on Sunday, and now after advancing with a five-goal performance, they feel as if they are back to level of play that made them national championship contenders in the first three months of the season.
“We struggled a little bit against Georgetown those two games and we didn’t have much possession there,’ Herbers said. “We rushed the forward pass a little bit, tried to play forward too quickly. We came together in practice and we were concerned about it, because in practice we didn’t work out that well either. We came together and talked a little bit about it, and we saw that if we were just patient and if we just kept the ball rolling then the gaps will open.
“That’s what happened today. We kept the ball, we had a lot of possession, and that’s the key. That’s what Georgetown did with us in the other games, and this time we did it to Drake. If we can keep going like that I think we can be very successful in this tournament.”
With fifth-overall seed North Carolina’s 2-1 win over Coastal Carolina on Sunday night, the Bluejays will travel to Chapel Hill, N.C., to face the Tar Heels in the third round next week. It will be a homecoming for Elmar Bolowich, who coached the Tar Heels for 22 seasons and led them to a national title in 2001. Bluejays assistant coach Justin Hughes is also a former Tar Heel. He played four seasons under Bolowich at North Carolina, where he played in 43 matches as the team’s goalkeeper and finished second in school history with a 0.79 goals against average for his career.
The match up between No. 12 Creighton and No. 5 North Carolina will be on Saturday, November 28. Kick-off is scheduled for 6:00 p.m. central time.
Listen to postgame interviews with Creighton head coach Elmar Bolowich and players Fabian Herbers and Rickey Lopez-Espin.
Listen to postgame interviews with Drake’s head coach Gareth Smith and player Steven Enna