ROLLA, Mo. – For the second year in succession, MissourI S&T will host a first round game in the Great Lakes Valley Conference Tournament as the Miners will face the University of Indianapolis in a 2 p.m. contest Sunday at the S&T Soccer Field.
Despite missing a chance to gain a share of the GLVC regular season title on Wednesday, the Miners enter the tournament as the second seed after finishing 10-2-6 overall and 9-1-5 in conference play. S&T, ranked third in the NCAA Division II Midwest region and 16th nationally by the NSCAA, will take on the seventh-seeded Greyhounds who closed their regular season Wednesday with a 3-2 win at Saint Joseph's.
UIndy brings an 8-5-4 overall record into Sunday's match and finished 6-5-4 in the GLVC.
The teams played to a scoreless tie on Sept. 11 in Rolla in a game where the Greyhounds outshot the Miners 28-12, but S&T goalkeeper Aaron Hohenstein (St. Louis, MO/Lutheran South) turned away 11 shots which included one on a penalty kick in the second half.
The Miners have the GLVC's top scorer in Felipe Andrade (Belo Horizonte, Brazil) with 12 goals and three assists for a total of 27 points; the 12 goals are the most by a Miner since 2003. Unnar Ulfarsson (Gardabaer, Iceland/Fjolnir Reykjavik) is also among the league's scoring leaders with six goals and seven assists, which is tied for second in the league, while Will McIntyre (Queenstown, New Zealand) and Austin Parks (Rolla, MO/Rolla) have notched four goals apiece.
Hohenstein recorded his sixth shutout of the season last Friday at William Jewell and has the league's third-best goals against average of 0.86. His 86 saves lead the GLVC and rank 10th in NCAA Division II.
As a team, the Miners rank fourth in the GLVC in goals against average at 0.97, while UIndy is one spot ahead of S&T at 0.94. Goalkeeper Miles Palmer, who was in goal for the Sept. 11 matchup between the teams, has steadied the nets for the Greyhounds with a 0.77 goals against average in 14 games and has made 43 saves in 1,285 minutes of play.
Javier Steinwascher leads UIndy in overall scoring with 14 points, while James Jenkins is the team's goal leader with six. Jake Meyer has also tallied five goals for the Greyhounds, who got goals from all three of their top goal scorers in Wednesday's victory.
The Greyhounds, making their 24th consecutive appearance in the GLVC Tournament, won the 2014 championship and was eliminated in the semifinals last season, the same point in last year's tournament where the Miners were knocked out.
The winner of Sunday's S&T-UIndy match will play in the semifinals on Nov. 4 against the winner of the game between Southern Indiana and Missouri-St. Louis in Indianapolis. In the other two first round matches, top-seeded Rockhurst will take on Maryville and Drury will host Quincy.
