Nov. 1, 2006

TULSA, Okla. - UAB's Jerson Monteiro scored the game winning goal with just under one minute to play to give the Blazers a 3-2 win over South Carolina in game two of the 2006 Conference USA men's soccer championship being held at the Hurricane Soccer and Track Stadium on the campus of the University of Tulsa. Montiero's 13th goal improved UAB to 10-6-2 (4-3-1 C-USA), while South Carolina ends its regular season at 11-4-1 (4-3-1 C-USA).

South Carolina got on the board first when Mike Sambursky took a Makan Hislop pass and fired it into the net for the early 1-0 lead. UAB's Michael Biggs evened the score 1-1 when he headed down a ball off a corner kick from the far post. The Gamecocks answered back to take a 2-1 halftime lead on Schuyler Reardon's header on a throw in.

The Blazers equalizer came on a scramble in front of the net and Trey Gregory was credited with the score. The teams remained deadlocked until Montiero's late goal.

UAB head coach Mike Getman's team has played the league's top teams down the stretch and is pleased with his teams effort as of late.

"We have had about five tough games in the last two weeks," Getman said. "We played Kentucky, SMU, FIU, and now played South Carolina once again. We had a tough stretch down the last few weeks but I thought our guys played very hard and very well for ninety minutes. A little bit lucky to get the goal right at the end, but I thought we played well enough to win. I'm very pleased with the effort."

With the win, UAB advances to play SMU in Friday's first semifinal 5:00 p.m. The Blazers defeated the Mustangs on Oct. 25 in Birmingham, 2-1. Getman said that the outcome of that game shouldn't be a factor in Friday's rematch.

"All of these games are rematches," Getman said. "We had lost at South Carolina a week earlier and SMU lost at our place a week ago. There's no secrets at this point. Everybody knows each other, and we have all played each other. We are excited to play the number one team in the country again and hopefully we can play as well as we did last time."