How AC Boise rebounded from its worst loss to score its biggest win yet
What a difference a week makes.
Seven days after suffering the worst loss in the young club’s history, Athletic Club Boise bounced back and knocked off league-leading Union Omaha 1-0 on Saturday night at Expo Idaho.
Tumi Moshobane slipped a sneaky header into the net in the 69th minute, erasing the foul taste after a 5-1 loss at Forward Madison that AC Boise coach called the one of the worst technical performances from any of his teams.
The Idaho manager sang a different tune Saturday after Boise secured its second win in its past seven games and took three points off the team atop the USL League One table.
“This side — and I’ll put that on myself — is not focusing enough on the defensive side of the game,” Miller said. “We’ve been going away on some bad surfaces, hard fields, and we’ve suffered a little bit. So it’s just a time to dig in and focus on different parts of ourselves.
“... I’m happier today with this performance from my team than I have been all season long, 100%.”
Boise (6-5-3) flexed that new-found defensive focus Saturday, securing its fourth clean sheet of the season. Omaha (9-5-1) entered as the second-highest scoring team in the league. But it could only muster a single shot on goal to lose its third contest in 10 days.
Boise only mustered a single shot on goal itself. But Moshobane made it pay off to break the scoreless deadlock in front of a new USL League One regular-season record 7,247 fans.
Moshobane said he noticed Omaha slacked off Boise midfielder Philip Mayaka throughout the first half. So he told Mayaka that if the two made eye contact, he would knife a run into the heart of the Omaha backline.
Mayaka found Moshobane with a chipped ball to the near post from 35 yards out, and Moshobane flicked a header up and over charging Omaha goalkeeper Rashid Nuhu, who could only watch helplessly as the ball tucked under the crossbar.
“I was actually of two minds when that ball came because I was gonna lay it off to Thomas (Amang),” Moshobane said. “But then I kind of felt like the presence of the keeper on top of me. So I just flicked it, and I looked back and saw he was off his line.”
Boise goalkeeper Jonathan Kliewer made the lone goal stand up by turning away Omaha’s best scoring opportunity in the 76th minute. Kempes Tekiela’s scissor kick at the back post of a corner kick threatened to find the top corner of the Boise net. But Kliewer punched the ball over the net to secure all three points.
Boise’s rough end to May stretched into June, and the first-year club left Madison, Wisconsin, last week surrendering four unanswered goals in the second half for an embarrassing loss. But a week full of gut checks resulted in the biggest win in club history thus far.
“We just showed the character that we have,” Boise midfielder and captain Charlie Adams said. “It’s really, really difficult conceding five goals and then coming in on the Tuesday or a Monday (after) and having to pick yourself up.
“I think it’s a great rule for football — but it’s also a great rule for life — that when you get knocked down, you get back up and you try again.”
Highlight-reel goals have defined Boise’s inaugural season thus far. But Miller credited his club for flipping the script and locking in defensively this past week.
“Especially at home, there have been times where we barely defend,” Miller said. “We’ve had a bit of a hard month, and so it’s just focusing on all phases of defending — our high press, our mid block, our low block — and doing that while not losing who we are, and that’s hard.
“What we’re trying to do here is play dominant football, and so this week was just a different focus. We know to lift the trophy, we have to be great defensively. We have to show humility in moments when we’re not dominating the game. And we can dominate that way, too.”
UP NEXT
AC Boise takes a 12-day break before returning home to host reigning league champ One Knoxville (8-2-3) on July 2, the first of six matches in July.
AC BOISE SIGNS ANOTHER IDAHO TALENT
The club added Boise native Grayson Carter as its second academy signee this week, joining 2026 Bishop Kelly grad Jackson Stephens.
The academy tag allows Carter to train with AC Boise while preserving his eligibility with the University of Pittsburgh, where he played in all 18 games and made 15 starts as a freshman last fall.
The 19-year-old midfielder played at Borah High between stints with the Portland Timbers and Real Salt Lake academies. He also played for the U.S. U-15 national team during a trip to Europe in 2022.
Carter joins Stephens, Keegan Oyler (Rocky Mountain High grad) and Blake Bodily (Eagle native) as locals during AC Boise’s first season.
