Here’s a recap of the 4A boys soccer semifinals at Zions Bank Stadium on Tuesday, with Murray and East both advancing to Friday’s final.
East 3, Crimson Cliffs 1
When the 4A state tournament brackets were first released a couple weeks ago, East’s players of course immediately checked out their path to the final as the No. 3 seed. What they were really doing was looking for undefeated Murray.
Murray beat East twice in close region games this year, and East wanted another shot at the Spartans.
Coach Javier Viana was quick to remind his players that first they had to get to the final before they could think about the rematch.
Mission accomplished.
East scored twice in the final 10 minutes of Tuesday’s 4A semifinal to pull away from No. 7 seed Crimson Cliffs for the 3-1 victory at Zions Bank Stadium.
Next up is a 4A final showdown with Murray on Friday at 4 p.m., with East eying its first state championship since 2006.
“When the bracket came out they very much wanted to get Murray back. But we simplified things and it’s one game at a time. We had a really tough quarterfinal match against Dixie. This obviously was a very tough match. So we just go one game at a time. So now they can start thinking about Murray,” said Viana after the win.
Jancarlo Vera, Alejandro Preciado and Jett Rimando all found the back of the net for the Leopards in the win.
East led 1-0 at the half through a 38th minute goal from Vera, but 47 seconds into the second half Crimson Cliffs equalized on a goal by Portman Busk.
It was a frustrating lapse for East after Viana thought his team played a very smart first half.
With the size and physicality difference between the teams, East was very pragmatic in their approach on Tuesday — keep the ball on the deck.
“Those guys are incredibly big, athletic, and fast. We’re a smaller, more technical team, so our goal was to have possession—70% or more—make them run, make them chase it, use the width, attack on the flanks, create overloads. That’s where they were going to be weak,” said Viana.
“Anything in the center channel, first balls, second balls, we were going to lose to their height and strength. They’re a fantastic team, but we just needed to play our game and not have balls in the air, which was our weakness.”
So in the 70th minute when East earned a corner kick, the last they it was going to do was simply whip a ball into the box.
Instead Halstenrud-Updyke hit a driven ball to the top of the box to an unmarked Preciado who smashed a low shot through traffic and into the back of the net for the 2-1 lead.
“Their strength is going to be their aerial prowess. So we did not want to take corners on a pitch that is much wider than we’re normally playing,” said Viana.
Two minutes before the final whistle, Rimando tacked on an insurance after a Crimson Cliffs defender misjudged the bounce on a deep free kick from East center back Charlie Spencer, with Rimando slipping in behind and chipping the keeper for the 3-1 lead.
Looking ahead to the rematch in the championship, Murray beat East 1-0 and then 2-1 in their two match-ups.
Viana said Murray is loaded with attacking talent and a strong defense and will be tough to beat, but he was quick to reference the old adage that it’s tough to beat a team three times in one season.
Murray 4, Deseret Hills 3
From Murray’s bright start, to Desert Hills’ incredible three-goal response, to a Murray red card, to Michael Martinez’s banger of an equalizer to freshman Parker Lawson’s late game winner, Tuesday morning’s 4A semifinal had just about every wave of emotion.
In the end, Lawson’s curling 24-yard strike proved to be the game winner as No. 1 Murray kept its perfect season intact with wild 4-3 win over No. 4 seed Desert Hills at Zions Bank Stadium.
It was just the second goal of the season for Lawson.
“I had to get up there, because when I have a chance like that to win us this game, I have to. I don’t get many shots, so I just had to take it,” said Lawson, who said the fact that senior playmaker Carlos Nieto-Rosales passed him the ball in the first place gave him full confidence to uncork the shot in the first place.
“Them having trust in me to be able to take shots like those in games like this, it’s awesome,” said Lawson, whose only other goal of the season came back on March 20.
On Monday though, it seemed like everyone was scoring goals in the seven-goal outburst.
Four different Murray players scored goals, while Desert Hills’ Todd Simister scored a brace and Boone Heaton added his own goal. Both teams trailed in the second half and both teams led in the second half. In fact, Murray led twice after halftime — and most importantly at the final whistle.
“That’s got to be one of, if not the most exciting game of this season,” said Murray’s Sebastian Garcia.
With the win, Murray advances to Friday’s 4A state championship game against the East-Crimson Cliffs winner at 4 p.m.
Top-ranked Murray came out flying on Tuesday, with Jesse Maquin and Jack O’Bryan both scoring in the opening 17 minutes as the Spartans capitalized on a dominating stretch of possession in the opening 30 minutes of the match.
Murray could’ve easily been up 4-0 after those 30 minutes with a bit better composure in front of goal.
“I think just the energy. I think we were ready to play, and we were excited, you know. And we practiced, we watched film, and we rested and we came prepared,” said Nieto-Rosales about the bright start.
Desert Hills slowly grew into the game and starting picking out its spots to transition the other way, and it finally broke through in the 32nd minute as Simister finished off a Heaton through ball to cut the lead to 2-1 by halftime.
Just before halftime Maquin was red-carded on a dangerous tackle near the sideline, forcing the Spartans to play down a man the entire second half.
After the late goal and late red card, Murray’s Garcia could see his teammates hanging their heads despite leading 2-1.
“Why are our heads down? We’re still in it,” Garcia recalls try to pump up his team.
Regardless, the negativity trickled into the second half as Desert Hills seized momentum to take an unikely 3-2 lead. Heaton tied the game at 2-2 on a point-blank redirection in the 49th minute, and then two minutes later Simister headed home his second goal of the game on a cross from Pierce Robinson for the 3-2 lead.
Anthony Guerra chalked up a lack of communication coming out of a halftime as the culprit to conceding twice so quickly.
“But once we started to figure out our rhythm, get into our groove again, we started to figure it out, we started to shut it down instantly. That’s one thing I’m really proud of my boys is the fact that we all are able to listen, communicate, and we’ll take it as positive feedback,” said Guerra.
Immediately after going down 3-2, Murray’s captains organized a quick huddle on the field and Nieto-Rosales said the message was straight to the point.
“We and had a little team talk. We know we’ve come far, we know it’s right there, so we just had to give everything and come back and thankfully we did,” he said.
Two minutes after Desert Hills’ go-ahead goal, Martinez delivered a sensation individual effort to level the score 3-3. He collected the ball near the left sideline, then darted 40 yards through traffic toward the top of the box before smashing a shot inside the far post for his 24th goal of the season.
“It’s something I’m very comfortable in doing. I mean, I’ve done it multiple times throughout the season. I saw the opportunity and I took it, and it came out good,” said Martinez.
Getting such a quick equalizer certainly helped Murray’s mentality the rest of the match.
It eventually capitalized with Lawson curving in the game winning goal in the 72nd minute after finding a pocket of space around the penalty and getting enough time to pick out the top corner of the net.
Nieto-Rosales delivered the winning assist to send Murray to the final, a game he and several of Murray’s seniors have experience with having lost to Ridgeline in the 2024 final.
“We’re excited. It’s been since sophomore year that we made it to a final, so this year we’re definitely going to bring it home,” he said.