ROME — It was a fast and furious second half as a scoreless tie at the break turned into a 4-2 NEB win over Towanda during NTL boys soccer action Monday.

Three of the six goals were scored in the final minute of the game.

"It feels great because that's a good team," NEB coach Scott Merritt said about the win. "That's a solid playing team that has lots of talent across the board. They will make you make mistakes, so we had some moments where we played real soft, or not aggressive to the ball, or horrible passes, and that's a recipe for disaster. But we did enough, and we got the win."

Four different Panthers found the back of the net as Xavier Castro, Brody Allen, Dan Barrett, and Anthony Pousen all scored. Allen had two assists, with Pousen and Landon Knowels each getting one helper.

Lucas Vincent had both Knight goals with Braiden Murray getting an assist.

"There were some real ugly moments, especially in the first half," Merritt said. "In the first half we were giving the ball away, and that's been a problem for us for the last 10 days. The last days suddenly were not a passing team, and it was showing up in the first half, and we finally locked some things in."

NEB controlled possession but Towanda had two real good chances with a Vincent shot that was just tipped over the cross-bar by NEB keeper Chris Rought, and then a second Josh Maye attempt that hit the beam and bounced out.

On the NEB defensive end Blaiz Nichols did a good job keeping NEB attempts at distance, but it was only by the hardest, and once he needed a defender to come through and clear the ball away.

A flip switched in the second half with a poor NEB clear ending up on the foot of Murray, who found Vincent behind the defense as he beat the keeper for a 1-0 lead 35 seconds in.

That would be Towanda's last goal for 39 minutes.

NEB answered at the 33:37 mark as a free kick was initial knocked away by Nichols, but Castro put in the rebound to make it 1-1.

It stayed that way until the 11:14 mark when Allen found Barrett for a 2-1 lead.

Then came the final minute that saw as much as scoring the first 79 minutes of play.

Pousen hit Allen with 45 seconds on the clock to make it a 2-goal game, but 20 seconds later Vincent made it a 1-goal game again with his second.

Pousen iced the win with his own goal with 14 seconds to play.

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