Missed opportunities and a late Akron goal on a penalty kick put to bed men’s soccer’s chances of making the MAC Tournament with one regular season game to go.

The Huskies (3-8-5, 0-3-1 MAC) lost to the Akron Zips (10-5-1, 3-1-0 MAC), 2-1, Saturday at the Soccer and Track & Field Complex. The Huskies fired off five shots on goal in the second half after they registered only one in the first half, but the one goal they managed wasn’t enough.

“I thought it was a pretty good 90-minute performance,” said head coach Eric Luzzi. “What Akron does, there’s not many teams in the country that play like that. They have a really big shape, they’re all competent on the ball [and] they try and spread out you.

“… I think after the first maybe 15, 20 minutes I thought our guys performed amazingly well. … They gave an absolute warrior’s effort, every single guy that played.”

The Zips took a 2-1 lead on a penalty kick goal by sophomore Adam Najem in the 83rd minute, sneaking the shot past redshirt junior goalkeeper Andrew Glaeser. The penalty kick was awarded after Akron’s Stuart Holthusen went down in the box, prompting a call from the referee.

“I’m sure there was contact there,” Luzzi said. “I thought his last touch was a heavy touch that he was never going to catch up to, and sometimes that factors into whether a call like that is made. I mean … 1-1 in a crucial game like that [with] 7:00 left, you’ll probably have six refs that won’t call it and four that will out of 10.”

Najem’s goal came 4:09 after sophomore defender Richard Hall netted the equalizer for the Huskies in the 78th minute. Hall’s corner kick, his second in 32 seconds, took a direct line to the goal, went off goalkeeper Jake Fenlason’s hands and found the back of the net.

“I thought the game was very, very even in the second half,” Luzzi said. “I thought we had a lot of the momentum. Of course, [the Zips] still had more of the ball, that’s what they do … but I thought we had a lot of the momentum. We had half a dozen decent chances in the second half, and there’s not many teams that create chances like that against an Akron team.”

Akron’s Sean Sepe opened the scoring with a shot from 12 yards out that was deflected and found the back of the net in the 18th minute. Sepe’s goal came after the initial ball of a free kick was headed out from right in front of the net.

“The fact that they scored on a deflected free kick and a penalty kick I think says volumes for the performance that our guys put in today,” Luzzi said. “I’m crushed for them with the result, but I couldn’t be prouder of them in terms of the performance.”