ERIE, Pa. – The Gannon men's soccer team showed the offensive firepower it has displayed all season, but the Golden Knights waited until midway through the second half to do it on Wednesday.

Gannon broke a 1-1 tie with three goals over a 10-minute period in the final 20 minutes, as senior midfielder James Pool (Hastings, England/Claverham) scored his first career hat trick in the Golden Knights' 4-1 victory over Slippery Rock at McConnell Family Stadium.

Coach Billy Colton's Gannon team, ranked No. 7 in the nation, stayed unbeaten at 14-0-2 overall. More importantly, the Knights clinched the No. 1 seed in the PSAC West with a 7-0-1 record. That means Gannon has won the right to host the PSAC Tournament semifinals and championship game.

GU has 22 points in the PSAC West standings with two games to play, and second-place Mercyhurst has 16 points. The Knights own the tiebreaker over the Lakers by being 1-0-1 against them.

"It's great," Pool said about clinching. "We worked really hard for this over the preseason. We have a lot of momentum going into this game. It's good to host the playoffs now, and hopefully we can keep going."



 
Tough first half:

Gannon struggled to put away shots in the first 45 minutes against a gritty Slippery Rock team that GU had beaten 7-1 earlier in the season.

Just 8:10 into Wednesday's game, Pool gave Gannon a 1-0 lead when Petter Dyrkorn (Sandvika, Norway/Doenski Videregaaende Skole) hit Pool with a beautiful, long pass, and he chipped it past the goalie into the net.

Less than 3 minutes later, Slippery Rock tied the score at 1 when Aitor Jorde scored off an assist from Joe Skillicorn.

The score remained that way throughout the rest of the first half and most of the second half.
 

Second-half surge:

However, Gannon finally broke the tie when Pool worked through traffic in front and scored off a pass from Tinashe Katsande (Norwich, England/Dereham Sixth Form College) at the 70:21 mark. Pau Ferrer (Valencia, Spain/ISES Isabel de Villena) also received an assist on the play.

Pool struck for his third goal – and his first career hat trick – about eight minutes later when Shota Toyama (Kanagawa, Japan/Tama) hit him with another precision pass and Pool finished again.

Pool now has 13 goals and is one behind Katsande for the team lead. Pool had one goal in his college career entering this season.

"I'm not much of a goal scorer," Pool said after the game. "I don't know what happened to me this summer, but I'm just scoring, so I'm over the moon about it."

Ferrer added an insurance goal a little more than two minutes later when he took a pass from Herman Aanberg (Hamar, Norway/Wang Toppidrett Oslo) and shot a laser to the upper left corner of the net.
 

 

Stat comparison:

Gannon outshot Slippery Rock 22-15 overall. The Knights had a 15-6 edge in shots in the second half after SRU outshot GU 9-7 in the first half. Both teams had six shots on goal, but Gannon converted four of them into goals.


What's ahead:

Gannon will look to keep its momentum going on Saturday at 3:30 p.m. then Knights visit Seton Hill in Greensburg.