Box Score SAN RAFAEL, Calif. — The Dominican University of California men's soccer team scored a season-tying four goals and nearly scored another on the game's final play, yet dropped a 6-4 Pacific West Conference decision to visiting Academy of Art University of San Francisco on Saturday.

Trailing 5-1, the Penguins (2-10-0/1-6-0) closed the gap in the final 14 minutes on goals by Nuri Bon-Acosta, Andrew Vu, and Robin Goldschmidt, and Mfonabasi Ikpe, who assisted on Bon-Acosta's goal, headed a ball just over the crossbar in the last seconds as the Urban Knights (4-7-0/3-4-0) prevailed.

“I thought we were decent offensively. We were flat and not ready to play unfortunately defensively,” said Dominican Director of Soccer Jon Delano. “Our back four [defenders] were pretty scattered, albeit I thought Cory Vanderpool was pretty fantastic today. He's a warrior.”

Vanderpool was one of the four Dominican freshmen to score in the game. The Penguins started seven freshmen. The Urban Knights started five international players.

The Urban Knights' Andrew Cruz scored less than four minutes into the game and AAU added two more goals — by Brazilian Leonardo Bartelle and Patrick Heinemann of Germany  — in the next 20 minutes.

The Penguins had a pair of great scoring opportunities themselves in the first half but could not capitalize. Kolby Mitnick set up fellow freshman Bon-Acosta with a crossing pass in front of the goal but Bon-Acosta's hard shot went straight into the stomach of AAU goalkeeper Ian Sutherland.

Later, freshman defender Fabian Valdez sent a crossing pass into the box that teammate David Mendez headed on goal but Sutherland came up with the save.

Dominican finally scored with 19:49 left in the first half.  A super free kick by Mitnick from 45 yards out got loose in the box and Vanderpool jumped on it and booted it past Sutherland. Vanderpool's second goal of the season made the score 3-1 and manufactured some much-needed momentum for the Penguins.

However, the Urban Knights regained control of the game about nine minutes later when Bartelle scored his second goal of the game for a 4-1 advantage.

Dominican goalkeeper Erik Anderson then did his best to keep Bartelle from getting the hat trick. Anderson robbed Bartelle of a late first half goal then barely two minutes into the second half, Anderson stopped a penalty kick by Bartelle then stopped him again on the rebound shot.
The Penguins actually had more shots on goal (13-11) than AAU. Vu assisted on Bon-Acosta's goal then, after the Urban Knights extended their lead to 6-2, Vu scored the strangest goal of the game. He appeared to be crossing a pass from 40 yards out to fellow freshman Drake Albee but the ball wound up in the net.

“I was shocked,” said Vu.

Brian Bianucci assisted Goldschmidt a minute later and the Penguins were pressing for another goal to the final buzzer.

“Offensively, I don't have any issues with what we did and I thought we did a pretty good job of keeping the ball,” said Delano. “But we were slow to apply pressure defensively, especially when the ball was coming through the middle. The bottom line is we didn't do a good enough job of getting pressure on the ball in our defensive third and they made us pay for it.”

The Penguins face another Bay Area PacWest rival on Tuesday. They visit Notre Dame de Namur University in Belmont for a 3:30 p.m. conference contest.