DELAWARE, Ohio — It was halftime of a third-round NCAA Division III tournament game and the Ohio Wesleyan men’s soccer team was in a deep fix.

Ohio Northern was leading 2-0 in a sport where a two-goal victory is considered a blowout.

“It was stone-quiet in that locker room,” Bishops coach Jay Martin said. “I had to get into them a little bit. That (deficit) would have been the end for a lot of teams in the tournament.”

In a game that will be part of the team’s lore, the Bishops scored three goals in the final 19 minutes to win 3-2. Travis Wall, a senior from Upper Arlington, scored the winner with 4:09 remaining.

Skill, of course, played a major role in the comeback. The players, though, said camaraderie was what really pulled them through in their march to the team’s eighth final four.

Ohio Wesleyan (21-2) will play Montclair State (19-3-3) in a semifinal at 6:30 p.m. today at Blossom Soccer Stadium in San Antonio. Calvin (18-5-2) meets Oneonta State (18-2-2) in the other game. The championship game will be at 6:30 p.m. Saturday.

Martin will set the all-divisions NCAA record for victories by a men’s soccer coach with 608 if the Bishops win the championship. Joe Bean won 607 games with Quinnipiac, Bridgeport and Wheaton from 1962 to 2006.

“Coming back against Ohio Northern was a credit to our toughness and fighting against the odds,” senior defender and tri-captain Andrew Miller said. “I say our success has a lot to do with our relationships going beyond the field. We’ll meet up in hangouts on and off campus. There are deep friendships. We play for one another.”

The Bishops, particularly the eight seniors, were desperate to get the team into its first national semifinal since 2006.

“We were feeling the heat,” said Wall, who leads the team with 17 goals and 15 assists.

“This is so much sweeter because it’s my senior year.”

Almost every Ohio Wesleyan team thinks about reaching the final, but there is such a fine line between advancing and being eliminated in the tournament that the players don’t talk about it.

“The final four is something you think is possible, but something you keep to yourself,” he said. “You know you can’t do it in one game. I think the effort we put in during the season contributes at the end of the season.’’

mznidar@dispatch.com