[ILLINOIS-PORTLAND: Women] Illinois produced the biggest comeback of the NCAA Women’s Tournament, rallying from two goals down in the second half with a pair ofpenalty kicks and beating No. 3 regional seed Portland, 4-3, on Janelle Flaws‘ golden goal, the 23rd goal of the season to tie Rachel Daly of St. John’s for the most in the nation.
Megan Pawloski stole the ball on a Portland free kick outside the Pilots’ areaand sent a pass to Flaws, who scored in the winner in the 108th minute.
“Megan took advantage of a mistake on their free kick,” Flaws said. “I knew if I got myself open in the box shewould find me. There were some shots earlier that I think I should have put away, so I was just concentrating on taking advantage of that opportunity, going one-on-one with the keeper in the box.”
The Pilots had 2-0 and 3-1 leads before Illinois rallied on penalty kicks by Vanessa DiBernardo, her second goal of the game, and Flaws.
“We are just fighting and truly living up to the name Fighting Illini,” Illinois coach Janet Rayfield said. “We were playing good soccer from the start and weregetting chances. We told the team at halftime to keep believing and just try to get the goals one at a time. We just kept at it until we could get ones into the back of the net. I give a lot of creditto this team for being persistent.”
Temperatures remained in the teens throughout the entire match, and the field had to be cleared of snow beforethe game began.
A lot of questions here in portland about the PKs and whether portland was merely setting up the free kick that was “intercepted” and produced the golden goal.