The Poway boys soccer team had a lot to prove going into Saturday’s final showdown in the inaugural CIF Southern California Regional Soccer Championships.

The Titans faced Santa Monica High School, a team that had an impressive 29-0-1 record and was ranked second in the United States by the National Soccer Coaches Association of America.

They also had to deal with a prediction from the Los Angeles Times pegging they would lose 3-0.

“For people to tell us we were going to be shut out — when we hadn’t been shut out all season — was a slap in the face,” coach Eugene Morris said. “L.A. just doesn’t respect San Diego.”

In the end, Poway and Santa Monica tied 1-1 during regulation time. The game was decided in overtime, when an opponent’s kick bounced off a Titan defender and into Ian Weinberg’s goal.

They’re called golden goals, those sudden death, winner-take-all overtime points that settle a game immediately, regardless of what happened in the game up to that point.

According to Morris, it was his team that had the better game. The 90 minutes of regular play were filled with near-calls, almost-goals that could have sent the game in the other direction.

The Titans had three shots that caromed off the goal posts. Any of those could have been a goal, said Morris, who also pointed out that the referees did not call an obvious penalty shot when a Santa Monica player pulled Collin Wooster down by his shirt inside the penalty box.

Put bluntly, Morris said, and with all due respect to the top-ranked team, the Titans dominated the match-up.

“I’m on cloud nine,” Morris said in a phone interview. “We’re runner-up and there’s no shame in being that.”

Not bad, Morris said, for a team that was ranked seventh in the tournament, and had to beat the second- and third-seeded teams on the road within a couple of days.

All in all, the performance capped what is perhaps the most memorable week for Poway soccer, one that began when the squad took home the San Diego-CIF Division I title, its only one since 1994.

The Titan’s performance concluded the team’s season at 22-2-5.

Morris said he knew four years ago, when most of the kids on the current roster were freshmen, that the team would be strong given time. Even then, Morris said, the boys played as a unit, a result of a group of them playing together since they were 8 years old.

The coach added that he saw a difference in his kids after they won the local CIF title.

“When we won that all the pressure was off,” Morris said. “The pressure was to win CIF, and once we got to state, that was gravy, it was extra and we had no pressure to win.”

Morris singled out the performances of Wooster, who scored a goal in each of the state games, and Weinberg, who stopped four penalty kicks to get the team to the semifinals.

He also credited Zach Olow. E.J. Schneekluth. Gunner Emery, Peter Katakalidis, Jordan Dow and Alex Henry .

“All the kids gave me everything they had, and I’m so proud of them,” Morris said. “This is going to go down as one of the greatest seasons in the school history for soccer.”