Burikas’ goal leads Prospect in OT

Updated: September 20, 2011 10:17PM

Prospect’s Matthew Burikas stepped onto an Alex Schnepf cross on Tuesday and his head shot goal gave him two goals for the season.

More importantly, it gave Burikas a game-winning goal in overtime, giving the Knights a 2-1 win over host Palatine in a Mid-Suburban League contest.

“I knew I had to time it perfectly and right when (Schnepf) hit it, I went in,” Burikas said. “Then I just had to get my head onto it.”

The win kept Prospect unbeaten at 9-0-2 and in control of the MSL East with a 3-0-1 record. Palatine fell to 8-4 overall and 3-4-0 in league play.

Palatine led 1-0 on a Josh Lee goal scored at 61 minutes, until Prospect’s Matt Wruskyj stunned the home crowd by teeing off from 20 yards out on the left side and sending a shot inside the far post that tied the game.

“We were very listless for the first 60 minutes of that game, until Wruskyj took it upon himself to make that play,” Prospect coach Kurt Trenkle said. “That was stunning. He put it across the mouth of the goal and hit the upper ninety.”

After a scoreless first half that saw few scoring chances, Palatine came out with energy in the second half and capped it with Lee’s goal. Lee leaned in near the goalmouth and redirected a Pirates’ shot into net, on an initial shot sent in from 18 yards out.

To that point in the second half, Palatine’s work rate had them attacking hard and finding good looks on net.

“We just need to commit to a hundred percent work rate, all the time,” Palatine’s Jon Clark said. “That’s when we were playing our best today. We were looking for people off the ball, people were running off the ball, and we had a lot of control in the middle.”

Wruskyj’s goal at 72 minutes helped his side locate its intensity, and it was a different Knights team on the field the rest of the way.

“When (Wruskyj) hit that shot to the upper ninety, I knew we had a chance to get it to overtime,” Burikas said. “We were talking about how we hadn’t won an overtime game in a couple of years.”

MSL teams play two mandatory, 10-minute overtime periods, and there was only 33 seconds remaining in the second overtime when Schnepf fed Burikas for the game-winner.

Pure joy is hard to come by, unless you’re a defender who just scored a game-winning goal, and Burikas and the Knights went predictably berserk in its aftermath.

“To come in here and win any time is a good day,” Trenkle said. “And we’ve now come back twice from deficits to win games.”

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