Miller scores twice, North Penn shuts out CB West for 4th straight win
TOWAMENCIN >> Needing to break a scoreless tie in the second half against Central Bucks West – and help the North Penn boys soccer team continue its late push to make the District 1-4A playoffs – Ryan Miller took initiative.
“Someone had to score,” Miller said. “And should’ve been and it was us and it had to be us if we want to extend the season.”
Miller found open space at the top of the 18-yard box and sent a shot into the net in the 55th minute to provide Tuesday afternoon’s SOL Colonial Division match with its opening tally.
Less than six minutes later, the sophomore struck again off a pass from CJ Leonardo to double the advantage. The Knights made Miller’s burst of offense hold up as they shut out the visiting Bucks 2-0 for their fourth consecutive victory.
“We’re on the border of playoffs so I guess the boys came out, we had to prove something, had to prove ourselves,” Miller said. “We want to get into playoffs – we want to extend the season. I guess that’s really what pushed us.”
A 3-1 home loss to Council Rock South Sept. 22 was North Penn’s fifth loss in six games and had the Knights sitting at 3-7-1. Six days later, North Penn blanked Bensalem 2-0 before rolling past Truman 11-0 Sept. 30.
The Knights extended their run of positive results to three last Friday by edging Pennridge 2-1, halting the Rams’ eight-game win streak.
“We made some changes, I know for myself I got moved back from midfield to center back so there’s been some moving pieces,” NP senior captain Nate Kim said. “I would say about halfway through the season we all had to go in our heads and reflect a bit and just kind of think about obviously the conference is not possible really at this point so we’re just shooting to lock a playoff spot and things started clicking.”
Tuesday, CB West controlled things early in the first half but North Penn (7-7-1, 6-6-1 division) began to find some momentum before the break. However, the teams – which played to a 1-1 draw at West Aug. 31 – still could not break the stalemate until 25:38 left in regulation when Miller scored off a pass from Cody Perrin.
“We wanted to start on the front foot but we got kind of pinned back a little the first 10, 15 minutes,” Kim said. “I thought it wasn’t necessarily the worst thing to get pinned back, we just try to get a feel for them and we didn’t want to risk anything pressing too high.
“We just absorbed a little bit and then we slowly started to keep the ball more and progress forward.”
Miller collected his brace at 19:51 and the Bucks were shutout for the second straight game as West (6-8-2, 5-7-2) lost its third in a row.
“In the first half pretty back and forth, both sides had good chances,” CB West coach Cooper Moyer said. Second half comes maybe a mental lapse on us in the back – they go up 1-0 and kind of took the wind out of our sails.
“At halftime we thought we were in a fair spot. We thought 0-0 was reflective of that first half but second half you go down one and then they score a second one fairly quickly, kind of opens the game up, started to play a little bit more direct, just trying to push and score one to come back into it.”
North Penn entered Tuesday’s match 27th in the District 1-4A rankings with 28 sides qualifying for the tournament. The win bumped the Knights up to 23rd. CB West, meanwhile, was 24th but dropped down to 27th.
“Listen, we’re not out of this thing,” Moyer said. “We’ve got two games left against two really good opponents so we’ll see what happens.”
West hosts Central Bucks South 7 p.m. Thursday then visits Pennridge 7 p.m. Monday.
North Penn, meanwhile, has three regular-season games left – at Souderton 7 p.m. Thursday, at CB South 3:30 p.m. Monday and home against Central Bucks East 7 p.m. on Wednesday, Oct. 19.
“I think it’ll be a tough challenge for us,” Kim said. “We’re (in) a four-game win streak, right, but three of them have been at home. So we have two away games coming up before Senior Night so we just got to go in with a strong mindset and honestly if we lock it down in the back and continue to play feet and play calm at the same time with intensity, I think we’ll get the job done.”
Miller put the Knights up 1-0 in the 55th minute by getting past a defender and driving into open space inside the top of the box, the sophomore then slotting a shot past the goalkeeper.
“Ryan Miller, he’s a great player, he’s probably one of the top wingers in the conference,” Kim said. “He just produces every game and, honestly, it’s a fullback’s nightmare to go against him. And he’s been tucking away goals every game which is great.”
Miller’s second goal came just after the midway point of the second half, Leonardo putting a ball behind the Bucks defense for Miller in the box and the sophomore knocked it into the net to make it 2-0.
“I saw him come get the ball cause I don’t know who played it through but I saw him get the ball and the defender wasn’t really on me,” Miller said. “So I just went right by him, took a touch on my chest and hit it in.”
