Colleges: No.13 Bulls rally past Villanova for victory

No.13 South Florida rallied from a halftime deficit to earn a 3-1 victory against Villanova and remain in second place in the Big East Red division on Saturday night.

The Bull came out flat in the first half, and paid the price as Matt Seamon gave the Wildcats the lead in the sixth minute. The Wildcats almost added to their lead in the 32nd minute, but Ashani Fairclough was on hand to head the ball away for a corner after Bulls goalkeeper Jeff Attinella had been beaten by Adam Amman’s shot.

Lucky to be trailing by only a goal, the Bulls turned their performance around in the second half. After Seamon was shown a red card in the 61st minute, the Bulls quickly got back on level terms, Hasani Sinclair finding the back of the net for his fourth goal of the season.

The Bulls then took the lead eight minutes later as Javed Mohammed’s corner found Andre Mittoo in the penalty area. Mittoo played the ball to Fairclough before Sebastian Thuriere finished the opportunity, burying the ball in the back of the net.

Ogi Perucica then added a third for the Bulls in the 76th minute, the senior recording his first career goal for the Bulls on Senior Night to make it 3-1.

South Florida remains two points behind Louisville in the Red division with the victory, and one point ahead of St. John’s with two games to play. The Bulls will look for a fourth straight win against DePaul at the USF Soccer Stadium on Wednesday night before travelling to Rutgers next Saturday to close out the season.

Colleges: No.3 Bulls rebound with victory against Pittsburgh

Goals by Andre Mittoo and Bernardo Anor allowed No.3 South Florida to rebound from its first loss of the season as the Bulls beat Pittsburgh 2-1 on Sunday afternoon at Founders Field.

Mittoo gave the Bulls (6-1-1, 2-1-1 Big East) the lead in the 16th minute, capitalizing on a rebound after Ashani Fairslough had been initially denied.

Bulls coach George Kiefer said he thought the Bulls aggressiveness was crucial to their overall performance on a poor surface that had taken on a lot of water over the past two days.

“On this type of surface (rough and bumpy) we really wanted to push the game into their half of the field,” said Kiefer. “We played out backs very aggressive and stepped up the pressure. We also changed up our formations which is something that we have been working on, and I think we are getting good enough where we can slide into something different if we need to in certain games.”

The Bulls maintained their hold on the game throughout the first half, and then started the second half brightly too. That led to a 52nd minute penalty kick that was converted by Anor to give the Bulls a 2-0 lead.

Pittsburgh (1-8-0, 0-4-0) pulled a goal back with five minutes to go, but the Bulls held on to earn victory. After losing its first game of the season on Friday night against West Virginia, Kiefer was pleased with the team’s performance.

“I thought the guys did a very good job today,” Kiefer said. “Pitt is one of the more difficult places to play with its field, couple that with the fact that is has been raining the past few days, so it was a very muddy surface and we had to tweak the way we played. But I thought that our guys did a great job with that.”