The Dominican University men's soccer team, the top seed in the 2016 conference tournament, was eliminated from the Northern Athletics Collegiate Conference (NACC) Tournament on Wednesday afternoon, playing the Wisconsin Lutheran College Warriors to a 2-2 draw through two overtimes before the Warriors edged the Stars 5-4 in penalty kicks.
 
"That's a devastating way to go out of the conference tournament," said Dominican's Erick Baumann following the match. "We needed to chase the game from the eighth minute but fought back to go up in the second half.  We needed to finish them off when we had momentum but we took our foot off the gas pedal again."
 
The Warriors took an early 1-0 lead in the ninth minute when Graham Ver Velde benefitted from a Dominican miscue and the sophomore alertly chipped the ball over Dominican's Gabriel Gongora who was off his line.
 
From there, Dominican chased the scoreboard, pressing forward but could not net the equalizer before halftime despite outshooting the Warriors 14-2 in the first half.
 
After the half, Dominican ramped the pressure, getting off four shots in the first two and a half minutes of the half before Isaac Perez's in-swinging corner kick found Cesar Franco at the back post.  Franco headed the ball back in front of the goal where Jonathan Arzeta knocked it in for his fifth goal of the season.
 
Dominican then pulled in front in the 62^nd minute when Arzeta sent Perez up the left flank to the endline where Perez slotted a low cross with Frankie Saiz making a run up the middle to tap in his third goal of the year.
 
No longer with the luxury of playing with the lead, Wisconsin Lutheran was forced to press forward, getting off six shots over the next 15 minutes before finally leveling the score with under eight minutes to play when Juan Serna got endline on the right side and chipped a ball into the center of the six-yard box when Nick Zupinski crashed the net and headed home the equalizer.
 
Dominican had a couple of opportunities through regular time to notch the go-ahead goal, including an indirect restart that resulted in a shot for Arzeta from 20 yards that sailed through the six-yard box and went wide.
 
In the first overtime, Dominican continued to test Wisconsin Lutheran's Erek Lehnen, forcing the freshman goalkeeper to make three saves in the period including stops on Perez and Arzeta.
 
After a wide-open first overtime that went endline-to-endline, neither team put a shot on frame in the second overtime period as fatigue started to become a factor.
 
In the shootout, the teams each converted on four of the first five shots sending the shootout to a sixth round where Zupinski converted before Dominican's Saiz banged his penalty off the crossbar.
 
With the tie, Dominican remains unbeaten in their last 14 games but now has to wait to see if the Stars will receive an at-large bid to the NCAA Division III Men's Soccer Championships.

Dominican dominated the match on paper, outshooting the Warriors 39-14 and putting 15 shots on goal but Lehnen was credited with 13 saves to keep his Warriors in the match.  
 
"Give credit to WLC," said Baumann. "They capitalized on an early mistake, played hard and got a fantastic game from their goalkeeper."