Mentor picks up a ‘special’ upset victory

It’s been an unusual week at Mentor, and seemingly with formidable University, the No. 1 side all fall in The News-Herald Top of the Crop, coming to town Oct. 14 to close the regular season, it seemed like a challenging scenario in which to grab a result.

But the Cardinals did anyway.

Nicholas Pavlosky’s firsthalf strike propelled Mentor to a 1-0 stunner over US.

Cardinals athletic director Jeff Cassella confirmed that Oct. 11, Chris Payne was informed he would not be finishing out the season as head coach and longtime assistant Bill Schulz would take over as interim coach.

Mentor gave Schulz his first win in that role in style.

“It’s real special for these boys,” Schulz said. “They’ve been putting in the work since early July, and we haven’t always been able to get the results we wanted. But we’ve known that it was there. We talked this week a lot about having the right attitude, the right amount of effort — and I think those were two things that helped carry us to victory.”

Coming off a 7-1 loss Oct. 9 to Brunswick, Schulz said his side didn’t do anything overly different tactically.

Ethan Smith assisted on Pavlosky’s decisive strike.

“We had the ball, and we were working well with possession in our final third,” Schulz said. “A lot this season, we’ve had trouble carrying possession that far. Tonight, we did not. We got the ball and Ethan Smith, one of our senior forwards, played a nice little through ball on a diagonal, and Nick Pavlosky had a beautifully timed run and found the back of the net.

“Coming into the game knowing they have been able to score goals it seems at will all season, we put an emphasis on defense. But we didn’t change anything tactically. We wanted to stick with what we’ve been doing all year and just focusing our efforts. So we stayed with three in the back, and we just made sure that everybody had an understanding that we had to defend as a team. That was a way we were able to get numbers back so we weren’t in unfortunate matchups.”

PAUL DICICCO — THE NEWS-HERALD Mentor’s Adam Engel heads out as, from left, Eric Berezne (9), Ethan Smith (18) and Brett Davis (16) look on Oct. 14 during the Cardinals’ 1-0 upset of visiting University.