In their final regular season game, Marshall County played at University Heights Academy and shut out the Blazers 5-0. One of the top teams in Region 2, UHA senior William Bryan is also the state’s leading scorer with 31 goals but he was shut down by the third ranked defense in the state along with goalkeeper Ben Burkeen who leads the state in shut outs with eight.
Collin Riley had the first shot on goal that missed just left, early in the game, a sign of things to come for the junior who scored the Marshals first goal in the 67th minute on an assist from Kiefer Court. Riley, Court and William Lynch all had good looks in the first half and UHA keeper Quinten Quarles kept the Marshals out of the net with some nice saves for the one goal halftime lead.
Two shots by Lynch and a header from Riley were all saved by Quarles in the second half before Riley got one through to score his second goal of the night and give the Marshals a 2-0 lead near the 17th minute of the match.
Two minutes later, Jack Noles scored on an assist from Jase Strader to make it a 3-0 game and before the dust settled, Pratik Patel made it 4-0 on an assist by Noles. Patel then scored his second of the game and the final goal for the Marshals to finish off the 5-0 win.
The Marshals took 43 shots in the game and held UHA to six. The UHA keeper had 14 saves and Burkeen recorded five. Coming into Tuesday’s game, the Blazers had out-scored their opponents 48-9 and held a record of 7-1-3.
Marshall County has out-scored their regular season opponents 57-6 and improve to 10-1-1. They will play the winner of Monday’s Mayfield-Graves County game on Tuesday at 8:00 in the district tournament held at Murray High.
