On Halloween night while students on campus were enjoying costume parties, San Francisco State Men’s soccer team was in San Diego claiming their first playoff match 1-0 over the University of San Diego, California.

The Gators entered the match as the lower seed, but tied with UCSD earlier in the season 1-1. The previous match offered insight into how UCSD plays and the Gators were ready for it junior Nolan Parker said.

“They’re a great defensive team that looks to make use of crosses and set pieces to score goals, while we’re a possession based team who wants to use creativity to break our opponent down and find opportunities,” Parker said. “Our chance came early in the second half with Chano (Feliciano Cardenas), a freshman, scoring a headed goal back post. We were dominating possession throughout the game until the last ten minutes UCSD made their final offensive push trying to lob balls into the box. We sat back and focused on defense to close the game out and ended with the win 1-0.”

The goal was on a play they practice all the time Cardenas said.

“Its a throw in on the left side on the field, Aydan (Bowers) launches it inside the box, Tariq (Pulskamp) gets a flick on the ball and I header it into top right,” Cardenas said, describing the play. “We work on this exact play at our trainings, so when game time came around we were composed and knew our role and execute like we did.”

The Gators move on to the next round to face Cal Poly Pomona Friday, Nov. 3 at 11 a.m.

The match will offer the Gators a chance to avenge an earlier 2-0 loss to Pomona and move on to the final round.