Bloom junior Anthony Aldape was stunned when his team let a two-goal halftime lead slip away Tuesday against T.F. United.

The forward, though, tried his best to hide his disappointment and keep his team positive.

“I just tried to lift us back up,” he said. “I tried to keep everybody's heads up. (T.F. United) had really good players and we made some mistakes on defense in the second half, but we just had to keep going.”

Aldape made sure the Blazing Trojans' season didn't end, scoring on a terrific individual play with 3:50 left in the second overtime to lift Bloom to a 3-2 win in a Class 3A Lincoln-Way West Regional semifinal.

Third-seeded Bloom (19-4-1) will meet Thornton co-op or Lincoln-Way West in the championship at 3 p.m. Saturday.

Although 14th-seeded T.F. United (7-11-2) seemed to have all the momentum after rallying from a 2-0 deficit despite playing a man down the entire second half after a red card, Aldape put the Blazing Trojans on his back.

Sprinting down the sideline, he took a pass from Jose Rodriguez, cut into the middle of the field with three defenders on him and unleashed a hard shot from 20 yards into the top of the net.

“It was a difficult play,” Aldape said. “They were playing good defense, but I just had to fight through it. I took my chance when I got it. It went in.

“It was crazy.”

The teams split a pair of regular-season games, each decided by one goal, but Bloom seemed set to roll after Alex Segoviano scored twice in the opening half.

T.F. United got on the board three minutes into the second half when Reynaldo Porter and Theo Tandja created a 2-on-1 on a counterattack of a Bloom corner kick. Tandja scored off Porter's assist.

With 15:30 to go, it was Porter and Tandja again creating pressure, leading to a Bloom handball in the box. Bloom goalkeeper Vicente Herrera (7 saves) stopped Porter's penalty kick, but was ruled to have come off his line.

On the second attempt, Damian Rincon buried the penalty kick to tie the game.

“We fell off in the second half,” Segoviano said. “We got too confident and (T.F. United) played great and played aggressive. I knew Tony was going to come through for us, though. As soon as I saw him take that shot, I knew it was going in.”

David Meraz made four saves for T.F. United.

“(Aldape) tends to hold back until he really needs to make a play sometimes,” Bloom coach Kelly Gutierrez said. “I'm not sure why, but if he was saving energy, he saved it for just the right moment.”

Steve Millar is a freelance writer for the Daily Southtown.