PEORIA - As the compliments about his goalkeeper spilled from his mouth, Peoria Notre Dame soccer coach Mike Bare quickly stopped himself and shifted the praise toward the goal.

"Without the crossbar, we would've lost this game tonight," he said.

In a matchup of two top sectional seeds, the crossbar proved to be the enemy for the University High School soccer team as it ended a physical, nail-biting match in a 0-0 tie Thursday at Peoria Notre Dame.

"We've had a lot of games like this one this year," U High coach Jeremy Stanton said. "Part of it's our finishing, part of it's being unlucky - hitting the post, being at the right spot and mishitting it. You can't do a lot about those but you know there's some we should've definitely finished."

Bad luck took them away.

With the two teams struggling to break through, the Pioneers (12-3-4) kept peppering shots on goal throughout the second half with an attack-first mentality. With U High controlling the ball with constant pressure on the Irish, it found itself in prime position for a goal.

"We had a lot of good opportunities that we created," U High midfielder Clint Vatterrodt said.

None found the net. Four times over the last 16 minutes, U High put near-perfect shots on goal, but each found a way to miss the net. Two Pioneer shots glanced off the crossbar, while one just missed the left post. But the backbreaker came in the 75th minute.

With the ball being kept alive inside the Notre Dame (14-2-2) box, Vatterrodt outjumped a defender to head the ball toward the right post. With an opening, the shot appeared to roll into the net, but Irish keeper Joe Gamba dove to his left and used his fingertips to knock the ball away.

"He came up huge," Bare said.

Gamba had to. A physical game that saw a total of 35 fouls went in favor of the scrappy Pioneers. With U High controlling the ball, Gamba was on the receiving end of a barrage of shots. The Pioneers outshot Notre Dame 15-6, including an 8-0 advantage in the second half.

"We dominated the game, I thought, overall," said Stanton, whose team is the No. 1 seed in the Mahomet-Seymour sub-sectional. "We didn't finish. Bottom line."

That has the Pioneers frustrated.

"Some games it's on and we'll get four or five goals early and it's just clicking for us," Vatterrodt said. "Tonight, we created those opportunities but they just weren't going in."

Finishing has been the problem all season for U High.

"We get so many opportunities but we don't put any of those away," said Stanton, whose team has scored 53 goals in 19 games. "Hopefully, that changes."