LONDON, Ont. - The Western Mustangs men's soccer team surrendered a late second-half goal in a 1-1 tie with the Windsor Lancers on a rainy, windy night at TD Waterhouse Stadium Wednesday.

With the tie, the Mustangs men move into a first-place tie at 10-1-4 for 34 points with the York Lions (11-2-1, 34 points) in the OUA West. The Lions have a game in hand.

Western, nationally ranked at No. 7,  closes the regular season at Brock (4-10-1) on Sunday afternoon - the Badgers are out of the playoffs - while York closes with games against Guelph (4-8-2) and Windsor (3-4-8), two teams fighting for their playoff lives.

The Mustangs looked to be the stronger team for most of the night, especially on a sequence of five consecutive corner kicks midway through the first half. But Lancers goalkeeper Dan Mendonca and his defence were equal to the task and fended off the Mustangs well, including a save at the start of this two-minute foray off Camillo Gonzales from 25 yards out.

After a scoreless first half, the Mustangs opened the scoring in the 65th minute on a nice play which started on the sideline with tic-tac-toe passing between Gonzales and Marco Zoeger.

Zoeger eventual got the ball and curled a beautiful cross to defender Dominic Bell who joined the rush late from the outside fullback spot and headed it low past Mendonca for a 1-0 lead.

Western controlled the play in the second half in wet, slick conditions, making it difficult to establish any sort of decent rhythm in passing.

Andrew Murdoch of Burlington, Ont., made several nice saves in the Western net to keep his squad up on the visiting Lancers including one on Darrin Dielemans and another on Mike Watson. He was credited with four saves in the tie but also came off his line several times to thwart Windsor rushes.

The Lancers nearly tied the game on two occasions but their outside, bad angle shots missed the mark.
Mustangs midfielders Daniel Baxa and Daniel Frankel both had great opportunities go high.

Windsor finally got a break.

With five minutes left, a bad bounce caught Western's defence off-guard and rookie substitute David Salinitri eventually took a bouncing ball over top of a defender and volleyed it past a helpless Murdoch to tie the game.

In the final minute of the game, Mendonca was hurt on a collision with Baxa on a 50-50 ball. The Western midfielder ran on to the ball and slid to try to make contact, while Mendonca came in cleats-first as well. Both players made contact with each other and the ball, with Baxa getting hit near his head and Mendonca in the midsection.

Mendonca had to be helped off the field and was unable to put weight on his feet, while Baxa got up after being down briefly.

The teams both felt their player was unfairly challenged on the 50-50 ball.

Western had already clinched a first-round bye to the host one of the OUA West semifinals on Oct. 30 and will now hope for York to falter to get a shot at top spot in the OUA West.

The Mustangs were without leading scorer Niko Mavrikos who was serving a suspension after being in an altercation on Sunday in a 3-2 loss to York - Western's only loss this season.

OUA West
Team GP W L T PTS
York 14 11 2 1 34
Western 15 10 1 4 34
Laurier 15 7 3 5 26
McMaster 15 7 5 3 24
Windsor 15 3 4 8 17
Waterloo 15 5 8 2 17
Guelph 14 4 8 2 14
Brock 15 4 10 1 13
UOIT 14 1 11 2 5