Men\u2019s soccer players at the University of San Diego have a little ditty about how coach Brian Quinn wears \u201ca magic hat\u201d that they break out only if they win the West Coast Conference title.<\/p>\n
They\u2019ve sung it the past three years. And they were singing it again Saturday night at Oregon State\u2019s Paul Lorenz Field after a dramatic 4-2 win against the Beavers gave the No. 7-ranked Toreros their fourth straight league title, a first for men\u2019s soccer in WCC history.<\/p>\n
He gets involved in training<\/p>\n
He loves it when we fight<\/p>\n
And when we win the WCC<\/p>\n
We\u2019ll sing this song all night.<\/p>\n
Four years ago, the Toreros went 2-15 overall. Since then, they\u2019re 25-3-3 in what historically has been one of the nation\u2019s better soccer conferences and claimed the WCC\u2019s automatic berth into the NCAA Tournament.<\/p>\n
This year required the most magic, though. A 2-1 loss at No. 6 Portland on Oct. 10 left them 1-1-1 with six games remaining. They needed to win all six, including Saturday at No. 10 Oregon State team that would claim the WCC title with a tie.<\/p>\n
The Beavers scored 1:45 into the game, but the Toreros equalized five minutes later on a deflected shot and went ahead 2-1 in the 67th minute after another fortuitous deflection off an Oregon State player in the box.<\/p>\n
That\u2019s the way it stayed into the game\u2019s final 10 minutes, until the Beavers tied it on a goal that was upheld after a lengthy video challenge by Quinn (college coaches get one per game).<\/p>\n
But senior Josh Martinez, a natural midfielder converted to defender when the back line was ravaged by injuries, curled a free kick into the upper left corner in the 82nd minute \u2013 a golazo, in soccer parlance \u2013 and Steven Ramirez added the clincher in the closing seconds against a pushed-up Beavers attack.<\/p>\n
Soon, Quinn was wearing a light blue bucket hat and dancing with the WCC trophy while players surrounded him and belted out the song they sing once a year. Ten seniors on the roster have sung it four years now.<\/p>\n
Brian Quinn is magic<\/p>\n
He wears a magic hat<\/p>\n
He used to live in Ireland<\/p>\n
Well, he said no to that.<\/p>\n
The Toreros (13-2-3) receive the WCC\u2019s automatic NCAA Tournament berth but don\u2019t need it, with a No. 7 ranking in the coaches poll and a RPI computer metric of No. 5 thanks to one of the Division I\u2019s most challenging nonconference schedules. They\u2019ll almost certainly receive a first-round bye when the 48-team field is revealed Monday morning and host the round of 32 at Torero Stadium next weekend.<\/p>\n
Win that, and they probably should be seeded high enough to host the Sweet 16 as well. The College Cup, soccer\u2019s version of the Final Four, is Dec. 12 and 15 in Cary, N.C.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Men\u2019s soccer players at the University of San Diego have a little ditty about how coach Brian Quinn…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":56100,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[1327,181,74,76,75,127,3425],"class_list":{"0":"post-56099","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-san-diego","8":"tag-college-sports","9":"tag-latest-headlines","10":"tag-san-diego","11":"tag-san-diego-headlines","12":"tag-san-diego-news","13":"tag-sports","14":"tag-toreros"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/56099","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=56099"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/56099\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/56100"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=56099"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=56099"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=56099"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}