BIDDEFORD — Soccer can be a sport of inches or a sport of miles, a game 90 minutes long that can be decided in a single five-second span.

On Saturday, University of New England’s season was boiled down to one such short stretch, as Gordon College’s Taylor McSherry scored a breakaway goal on a brilliant individual effort with 2:01 to play to lift the Fighting Scots to a 1-0 victory in a Commonwealth Coast Conference women’s soccer quarterfinal at a wet and windswept Barbara J. Hazard Field.

Gordon (13-6-0, 6-4-0 CCC) moves on to play Roger Williams in a CCC semifinal on Tuesday, while UNE (11-4-2, 5-3-2 CCC) will have to wait to see if it’s granted a berth in the Eastern College Athletic Conference New England Championship.

McSherry’s goal came at the crescendo of a big 15-minute offensive push by the Nor’easters, who had controlled most of the contest. With UNE pushing players up the field, a ball into the Gordon box was cleared by Fighting Scots defender Shelby Palafox toward McSherry at the midfield line.

With two Nor’easters marking her, a great first touch by McSherry put her past the defenders and in on goal from 50 yards out, with the second team all-CCC performer’s superior speed allowing her to pull away toward the UNE goal.

“I just saw an opportunity,” McSherry said of the moment. “We practice that a lot, so I knew exactly what to do. I have a tendency not to really think when I play and just go with my first nature.”

With plenty of time to pick out her shot, McSherry stayed patient, waiting for UNE goalkeeper Brielle Robinson to make the first move. Robinson did, coming out of her net just as McSherry reached the 18-yard box, at which point she drilled the ball into the top-left corner.

“You can tell if the goalie’s making a decision to come out or stay in,” McSherry said. “She stayed back and then came out a little too late, so I knew to just bury it.”

It was the second of just two Gordon shots on goal.

“It’s awful,” UNE coach Heather Davis. “We had two backs between (McSherry) and the ball and that’s pretty standard. It was a great first touch by her to spring her and she’s a phenomenal player. It was a pretty heroic effort on her part to beat us.”

UNE played most of the game in the Gordon half of the field and held a 17-5 shots advantage, with nine of those 17 on frame. But on a rainy day in which the footing was quickly deteriorating for both teams as the match went on, only one of those UNE shots seriously threatened Gordon goalie McKenzie Dion’s net.

It came in the 78th minute, when a cross from Lindsey Monaco on the left floated toward the middle of the box. There, midfielder Margaret Palmer volleyed the ball and it looked to be heading inside the right post, only for Fighting Scots defender Kaitlyn Hawn to clear the shot off the goal line.

Other than that, there was very little to come by in the way of significant goal-scoring chances for the Nor’easters, who were shut out for the third straight game.

“We knew the footing was going to be suspect for both teams and would be a challenge throughout the day,” Davis said. “We also knew the ball was going to skip and travel, so we were trying to keep possession into the final third and slip people in to give them solid chances, but Gordon’s defense was pretty stingy.”

It was the fourth straight loss in the quarterfinal round for the Nor’easters, who will now await word on a place in the ECAC New England Championship tournament, the pairings for which will be announced on Nov. 10. UNE has made the ECACs three times in its history, last in 2011, when it entered with a 12-2-3 and fell to Worcester State in the first round.

“It was a tremendous season and we’re still hopeful we have soccer to play with the ECACs,” Davis said. “Hopefully our record of achievement over the course of the season will be compelling to the committee to give us a shot at that.”

— Staff Writer Cameron Dunbar can be contacted at 282-1535, ext. 323 or cdunbar@journaltribune.com.