Staff photo / Greg Macafee Cardinal Mooney’s Nick Pregibon (13) works the ball up the field as Wickliffe’s Logan Butler (25) attempts to chase him down. Pregibon scored three goals in Mooney’s regional semifinal win over Wickliffe on Wednesday at Boardman High School.

BOARDMAN — Cardinal Mooney’s postseason run continues.

Behind a three-goal performance from junior striker Nick Pregibon and a last-second goal by junior Mason Janis, the top-seeded Cardinals (16-3-1) dispatched No. 4 Wickliffe (16-5), 4-0, in a Division III regional semifinal matchup Wednesday at Boardman High School.

The Cardinals move on to play Beachwood on Saturday afternoon at Howland High School.

“It was a good performance, that’s a very solid Wickcliffe team over there so we knew they were going to put up a battle and that’s exactly what they did,” Cardinal Mooney coach Matt Britton said.

Just like they have throughout the playoffs, the Cardinals dominated play, but the nerves were there in the first few minutes of the game as the Blue Devils went on attack and created opportunities to get the Cardinals on their back foot.

“We started the game nervous, and it led to a few mistakes and a few mental errors, taking up the wrong spaces and we weren’t stringing passes together like we normally would and we were turning the ball over uncharacteristically,” Britton said.

Junior goalie Aiden Markey stepped up big early on for the Cardinals as they settled in. His first big save came when he touched a ball over the top of the crossbar on a long Wickliffe shot from outside the 18-yard box. Then, with about four minutes left in the first half during a one-on-one point-blank situation, he was able to deflect a shot past the left post with a kick save.

“This is our 14th clean sheet of the season in our 20th game of the season and we’ve only conceded 14 goals,” Britton said. “I mean he’s only called upon maybe once or twice to make saves during games, and he does it tremendously.”

Once the Cardinals got on the scoreboard though, the nerves settled and they took over the game.

Pregibon got the first of his three goals when he knocked home a shot from the left side of the 18-yard box past Wickliffe keeper Anthony Shaw with 20 minutes left in the first half.

The final three goals came in the last 15 minutes of the second half as Mason Janis found Pregibon with a beautiful through ball from about the 40-yard line and Pregibon finished it off in the box.

His final goal came at the 10:18 mark when Aidan Hryb found himself on the endline and sent a pass back into the box to Pregibon.

“It was all them (his teammates),” Pregibon said about the assists on his three goals. “It was the build up, it was the crosses and catching the defense off guard with runs into the gaps. They gave me the easy part of just finishing it. All the credit to them.”

Britton said Pregibon’s last goal was exactly how the Cardinals practice it.

“That’s how it’s drilled into us, we like to move the ball around. If we get to the endline we like to have service back across, and it was right where it needed to be,” Britton said. “Just being in the right place at the right time.”

Janis, who scored two goals in Mooney’s district final win over Kennedy scored his lone goal with three seconds left in the match.

Since the playoffs have started, the Cardinals have only allowed one goal, which came in a 10-1 victory over Conneaut in the first round of the tournament, but they’ve recorded three straight shutouts since and are starting to play their best soccer. Moving forward Britton believes it’s going to come down to just continuing to play their style of soccer.

“We just have to keep the momentum going,” Britton said. “We’re in a hot streak right now, but we just have to keep taking it one game at a time and just try to instill our style of play on the game. We have to set the tempo and not allow opponents to set the tempo for us. We have to set the tempo and take the game to our opponents.”

Cardinal Mooney’s regional final matchup with Beachwood is set for 4 p.m. Saturday.