MORGANTOWN — West Virginia men’s soccer got a treat of a win over Marshall in the Mountain State Derby.

The No. 19 Mountaineers put on a dominant performance on Halloween to win 3-0 over No. 11 Marshall to move to 11-3-2 on the season. Marshall fell to 8-2-5 on the year. WVU now leads the Mountain State Derby 18-8-4.

“I said to the guys, the best way to get over the line is to score the second, score the third,” head coach Dan Stratford said. “It’s nice when they do what they’re told, and put the ball in the back of the net.”

With the win, WVU would’ve been tied with Kentucky at 18 points atop the Sun Belt Conference, but the Wildcats beat Georgia State just minutes before the end of the WVU game, 1-0. WVU can’t win the top seed in the Sun Belt Conference now, since the Wildcats are at 21 points and hold the tiebreaker. WVU lost to Kentucky in Lexington its last time out.

The Mountaineers can still fight for the second seed and have one more game against South Carolina to close out the regular season.

It was a pretty dominant performance for the Mountaineers from whistle to whistle. Marshall rarely had the ball inside WVU territory except for a couple of chances in the early minutes.

Aside from that, WVU was threatening the whole night, and it was two seniors on Senior Night to help WVU past its in-state rival.

After a near miss from forward Marcus Caldeira on a header in the early minutes, the senior got his get back. Caldeira made a move, making the Marshall defender miss, and then it was a footrace. Caldeira took off past the defense and slotted it into the bottom left of the goal to give WVU a 1-0 lead in the 23rd minute. Cladeira’s goal was his 36th of his career, and eighth on the season. It was the first goal scored during regulation in the past two Mountain State Derbys.

“I saw my opportunity to take the flank, and I ran with it,” Caldeira said. “I saw the goalie shift a little bit to his left, so I tried to slot it right. It worked.”

He had another later on in the match, that was essentially the dagger. Caldeira scored from within the box for his second goal of the game.

Cladeira’s two goals give him nine on the season and 37 in his career. Caldeira played one of his last games at Dick Dlesk Stadium. He’s spent four years in Morgantown.

“It was tough,” Caldeira said. “Initially, I was a little bit emotional because I know my time here is limited, but at the end of the day, I was just hungry. Playing in front of my family, it just means the world to me. They are the ones who put that hunger in me, and I went out and just played.”

Midway through the second half, WVU wasn’t parking the bus and was on the attack. The Mountaineers won a corner and fired it into the box. The 6-foot-1 defender and Morgantown native and redshirt senior Dante Huckaby jumped up and headed it in, making it 2-0 in the 63rd minute. Huckaby’s goal was his first of the season and his first ever as a Mountaineer. He’s played in 56 games and never scored until Friday night on Senior Night.

Stratford was very close to not even starting Huckaby.

“It was that deciding factor of Dante’s playing in this game before, local boy,” Stratford said. “He has experience in the fixture. It was such a razor-thin decision. But, what a special moment for a Morgantown kid to go and score a really, really crucial goal at the stage of the game that he did, and a memory that will last him a lifetime.”

WVU was aggressive. Stratford expected Marshall to be more on the attack and direct. WVU pushed the ball after a couple of tactical passes and had 17 shots and eight shots on goal.

WVU’s defense had another clean sheet. It was the Mountaineers’ eighth clean sheet of the season. Marshall only had a couple of chances. The Thundering Herd had six shots on goal and two shots total. They only won seven corners, too.

After the second goal from Caldeira, Marshall seemed depleted, and WVU closed it out for a big win on Halloween, and now heads to South Carolina on Nov. 4 to close out the regular season.

“As great as tonight is, I hate to say it, but we should’ve been winning a conference title tonight with the results that we didn’t get at Georgia State and Kentucky,” Stratford said. “But we’ve given ourselves an advantage to certainly make sure the seniors get to play here again and conceivably play here again against Marshall.”