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ROCK HILL, SC— The Winthrop men's soccer team netted four second half goals en route to a 6-3 victory over Virginia Military Institute, Tuesday evening in Big South Conference action at Eagle Field.

With the victory, the Eagles are now 4-6-1 overall and even their conference record to 2-2 while VMI falls to 0-9-1 overall and 0-3 in the league.

“Obviously I'm very pleased to pick a conference win up and score six goals,” said Winthrop head coach Rich Posipanko. “However, we still have a tremendous amount of work to do defensively if we expect to make a run at the championship at the end of the year. Even though we cherish every win, I still didn't see the improvement that we needed to have from one game to the next.”

The game flow was very slow for much of the first 50 minutes of the match as Winthrop held a 2-1 lead at halftime. But in the 55^th minute, VMI tied the match on a Sonny Landry goal. Landry took a cross on the ground from Brian Harding and then spun right around the Winthrop defender and placed the ball into the net.

The tie was short lived as Tomas Brennan netted his second goal of the match just 26 seconds later. Josh Goldstein cross the ball into the box behind the Keydets defense and nobody ran with Brennan as he had a free header from 10 yards out and redirected the cross by Brian Sowell into the net. Around three minutes later Andres Pullin nearly made it 4-2 as he ripped a low shot through defenders to the near post, but Sowell reached out and pushed the ball outside of the post and out for a corner kick.

VMI tried to tie the match as it pushed forward continuously and had a couple of chances but Tom Banfield held strong. The game started to open up and Winthrop took advantage by adding three more goals in the final 12 minutes.

Miquel Casajuana made it 4-2 when he took a pass from Nick Kowalksi, dribbled into the box and ripped a shot from about 10 yards out to the near post past Sowell for his second of the season. Winthrop made it 5-2 when Tinotenda Chibharo made the Keydets pay for a poor clearance. The clear came dribbling out to Chibharo, who ripped it one time from 18 yards out to the left corner for his first collegiate goal.

The Keydets answered two minutes later when Amir Shihata took a cross from Zach Morgan and placed the ball into the net from six yards out.

Adam Skonicki added the sixth goal in the 88^th minute, his first of the season, when he was set up with a one-on-one with Sowell on a through ball from Ted Bartels. Skonicki dribbled the ball toward the goal and slipped a shot low to the far corner for his first of the season.

For the fifth time of the season, Winthrop allowed a goal in the first 10 minutes of the match as VMI's Kip Zechman beat Tom Banfield to the low corner in the 5^th minute. The play started with a feed into to the 18-yard box by Landry to Harding, who the flicked the ball through his legs one touch out toward Zechman. The sophomore midfielder took a couple of steps toward the pass and perfectly placed the shot into the right corner of the goal.

Winthrop answered in the 17^th minute when Goldstein dribbled two defenders and then placed a shot over the head of Sowell to the top right corner for his first of the season. The Eagles struck again just before halftime as Brennan netted his first of the season. Goldstein moved the ball toward the middle of the field and dished off a pass to Brennan, who then ripped a shot into the back of the net.

The shots finished pretty even as Winthrop had a 22-18 advantage. Banfield finished with six saves and is now 2-1-1 since taking over in net four games ago and Sowell finished with five saves.

Winthrop will be back in action Saturday, Oct. 16 at 6 p.m. when it hits the road to take on Radford. VMI will be off until it hosts Radford on Wednesday, Oct. 20 at 4 p.m.