St. John’s soccer closes out home stand with win over Columbia

St. John’s soccer took down Columbia to close out its long home stand.  

On Monday night, with several members of the St. John’s basketball team watching, the St. John’s soccer team finished off its five game home stand with a tight 1-0 victory over Columbia.

St. John’s controlled the game from the start, but got its first real opportunity to open the scoring in the 12th minute when Matt Forester found some room on the left side of the box and fired in a shot.

The shot was saved, but the rebound fell to Brandon Knapp who attempted to steer the ball into the empty net; however, he hit the post on a tight angle shot to keep the game scoreless.

The Red Storm had several quality chances to open the scoring after that, but Columbia goalkeeper Michael Collodi came up with some quality saves to keep St. John’s scoreless.

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One of the biggest chances came in the 31st minute as Atila Ashrafi had time to turn and launch a fantastic long-range shot at goal and Collodi came up with an incredible save. If not for Collodi’s efforts, the game may have been much more than 1-0 in favor of the Johnnies.

After consistently knocking on the door for the entire first half, the Johnnies would finally break through and punch in a goal in the 43rd minute as Lucas Bartlett headed home Ashrafi’s corner kick for his second goal of the season.

St. John’s continued to dominate in the second half as they searched for a second goal, but were unable to do so and the one-goal lead was good enough to close out the win for the Red Storm.

St. John’s soccer looking to use home stand as a springboard forward

Columbia only came up with seven shots in the game, but none of them threatened Luka Gavran’s net as he did not have to make a save in the win.

The 1-0 victory results in the Johnnies having won four of its five games in this home stand at Belson Stadium and moving to 4-2 on the season.

Now, the real test begins as Big East play gets underway on Saturday as St. John’s will travel to Cincinnati to take on a tough Xavier team who has stormed out of the gates with a 5-1 start to the season.

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Xavier’s only loss of the season was a tight 1-0 loss to then No.1 Indiana on September 6th.

St. John’s is currently on a three-game unbeaten streak against the Musketeers with the last meeting coming back in 2019, resulting in a 3-1 come from behind win for the Red Storm.

However, the Johnnies have never won a game on the road against Xavier.

St. John’s will try and change that on Saturday at 7:00pm EST on FloSports.