ROLLA, Mo. – Having moved up to third place in the Great Lakes Valley Conference standings following their first weekend sweep of the season, Missouri S&T's men's soccer team heads to Illinois this weekend for a pair of matches as it looks to stay on the heels of the league leaders.
S&T will open the two-game road trip Friday with a 7:30 p.m. game against McKendree in Lebanon, Ill., followed by a 2:30 p.m. matchup Sunday against Illinois Springfield before the Miners play four of their next five games at home.
Back-to-back 3-1 wins over Missouri-St. Louis and Maryville vaulted S&T to the third spot in the standings with a 4-0-3 mark in the GLVC, putting the Miners (5-1-4 overall) behind only the league's two nationally ranked teams of Rockhurst and Southern Indiana.
The GLVC's offensive player of the week,
Felipe Andrade (Belo Horizonte, Brazil), helped lead the Miners to the two victories by scoring three times over the weekend to give him a share of the league lead with eight goals on the season. He scored twice against UMSL – including the decisive goal midway through the first half – then tallied the first goal for the Miners in Sunday's victory over Maryville.
Andrade's 16 points on the eight goals has him tied for second in the GLVC in overall scoring, while
Unnar Ulfarsson (Gardabaer, Iceland/Fjolnir Reykjavik) has 11 points on three goals and a team-high five assists; the assist total is tied for third in the league. In addition,
Will McIntyre (Queenstown, New Zealand) has recorded two goals and four assists for eight points.
S&T goalkeeper
Aaron Hohenstein (St. Louis, MO/Lutheran South) has recorded an 0.60 goals against average – the fourth-best mark in the GLVC -- with 52 saves in 906 minutes of play.
McKendree is 2-3-2 overall and 1-3-2 in the GLVC at the start of play this week and is coming off a weekend in which it lost at Lewis and Wisconsin-Parkside by a combined score of 9-0. The Bearcats, who have scored nine times in those seven games, are led in the scoring department by Marcus Taylor with three goals and Dylan Cassidy with five assists.
Goalkeeper Eddie Starr has a 1.71 goals against average and has stopped 26 shots in goal in 580 minutes.
Illinois Springfield, who finished 2-11-2 in the GLVC a year ago, has made a jump in the league standings under head coach Adam Hall to 4-4 in the conference and 4-6 overall, despite dropping a pair of one-goal games to UW-Parkside and Lewis last week.
Much of the improvement can be attributed to the scoring of Zach Allevi, who has scored five times on the season and Jack Coombes, who had four goals. Goalkeeper Tommy Geile has played every minute in goal and owns a 1.30 goals against average.
