Category: Story

WOMEN’S NEWS … No. 18 Maryland joined ACC rival Wake Forst and UAB as the first teams to go 6-0-0 when it beat American, 1-0, on Wednesday. An early second-half goal by sophomore Jasmyne Spencer was the difference for the Terps, who had a 20-4 edge in shots but struggled to put away AU.

“American is a good team and they put 10 players behind the ball and made it difficult for us,” said Maryland coach Brian Pensky. “Good teams find ways to win on not so crisp days. And today we were not so crisp.”

* Wednesday’s most intriguing game pitted Morehead State against Kentucky. It marked the return of Warren Lipka to UK, the program he started and coached for 17 years, for the first time since he was dismissed at the end of last season.

Now the coach of Morehead State, Lipka watched the two teams battle to a 0-0 tie. “There were a lot of close calls,” he said. “I think it could have easily been a 2-2 score.”

* Utah’s 2-0 win over Princeton gave Coach Rich Manning his 100th career win. “I got here at the right time [in 2002] and I am very lucky,” said Manning who previously was an assistant at powerhouse Santa Clara.

Wednesday’s Scoreboard

* No. 24 UAB’s game against Samford scheduled for Thursday was postponed due to the sudden passing of Samford men’s basketball player Jim Griffin. No makeup date has been set.

COLLEGE CUP NEWS … Regions Park, the 10,000-seat home of the Double-A Birmingham Barons, hasn’t never hosted a soccer game, but that isn’t stopping the city of Hoover, Ala., from bidding for the 2011 and 2012 Men’s and Women’s College Cups, which will be held jointly for the first time.

Alabama Sports Foundation President Gene Hallman is pushing Hoover as a warm-weather option for the final fours, which have been plagued through the years by cold weather,

“We were told they were looking for a place where they can establish roots on a long-term basis,” Hallman told the Birmingham News. “The city of Hoover is very aggressive going after these types of events. Our intention is to make the bid so attractive that they reward it to Hoover for two years.”

MEN’S NEWS … When you think about summer jobs for a college student, a few come to mind. Camp counselor. Store clerk. Busboy. Lifeguard. But prison guard?

That’s what Kentucky freshman midfielder Matt Lodge did in the summer before leaving his native England to join the Wildcats.

“It was a pretty laid back job, to be honest,” Lodge told Cat Scratches. “I wasn’t dealing with prisoners as much as I could have been. I pretty much just escorted them in and out of their cells, to and from their work places and guarded equipment.”

The prison was a “Cat C” prison — two levels below a maximum-security facility — but a lockdown took place on the day, coincidentally, UK coach Ian Collins was supposed to call Lodge and go over plans for his first season in Lexington.

Collins had discovered Lodge last winter at a trial of English amateur players and already calls the freshman his best player — a huge compliment when you consider the Wildcats feature Soccer America Preseason All-American Barry Rice.

“That is quite a statement about a guy who has been here for a month and a half,” said Collins. “Just the quality he brings every day, the effort level, the intensity, the competitiveness. All of those things are very good and he is just very good.”

Lodge got his first collegiate goal Sunday for the 2-0-0 Wildcats in a 4-1 win over Bowling Green in the finale of the UK Invitational before 1,475 fans.

* THREE-GAME SWEEPS:
Ten teams had 3-0-0 weeks to start the 2009 men’s campaign …Cincinnati (Bearcats are 3-0-0 for the first time since 1999.)

College of Charleston (Senior John Bello had the game-winners against Coastal Carolina and Old Dominion)
Duke (Blue Devils debuted this week in the Soccer America Top 25 at No. 20)
Gardner-Webb (Redshirt-senior Gerard Hefferon was the Soccer For A Classic MVP)
High Point (Brothers Karo and Fejiro Okiomah have three of the Panthers’ four goals)
Iona (Senior Gustavo Destasio scored game-winning goals against Georgia Southern and North Florida)
N.C. State (Wolfpack gets an early ACC test at No. 2 North Carolina on Saturday)
UC Irvine (Sophomore keeper Andrew Fontein has 0.97 GAA, second lowest in school history)
UC Santa Barbara (David Walker matched ’08 season total with three goals at West Virginia Nike Classic)
UMBC (Sophomore Andrew Bulls had five goals and four assists in the three wins)

Tuesday’s results

* HAT TRICK HERO:
— Senior Andy Stadler registered his first career hat trick to lead George Washington to a 7-1 victory over the District of Columbia.

WOMEN’S NEWS … One of the hottest women’s conferences is the SEC. It had six teams make the 2008 NCAA Tournament. More than a dozen games involving SEC teams will be televised this season. And they have been cleaning up in non-conference play.

Six SEC teams — Vanderbilt (5-0-0), South Carolina (4-0-0), Mississippi State (4-0-0), Georgia (4-0-1), Arkansas (4-0-1) and Auburn (2-0-2) — are undefeated after three weeks of play, and no team has a losing record.

The only down note so far came when Florida star Ashlee Elliott was lost for the season with an ACL injury in the Gators’ 2-1 win South Florida. The defending conference champions then traveled to the Illini Challenge Cup and lost to Indiana, 2-1, and Florida, 3-0.

* It’s long way from Long Island University’s Brooklyn campus to California, but the Blackbirds had not trouble adjusting on their trip to San Francisco for the USF odwalla Nike Classic, where they beat the host team and San Jose State by the scores of 2-0 to give them four shutout wins in four games.

The trip was a homecoming for LIU’s six Californians, four of whom started against San Jose State. Ariana Calderon, the 2008 Northeast Conference Rookie of the Year and Player of the Year, had the first goal. Also starting were senior Tasia Davis and juniors Sami Bock and Caitlin Meadows.

Tuesday’s results

* HAT TRICK HERO:
— Maggie Lupinski had three goals in 19 minutes in the second half to lead St. Joseph’s to a 5-2 comeback victory at St. Peter’s.

SMALL COLLEGE NEWS … Despite a change in coaches, Messiah rolls on. The 2008 NCAA Division III champion won its first two games under Brad McCarty, who was the Falcons’ top assistant coach for the previous eight years and promoted to head coach when Dave Brandt took the Navy job. Messiah beat Gordon, 5-0, and Fredonia State, 3-0, getting seven of its eight goals in the second half.

A crowd of 1,750 packed Shoemaker Field for the opener in which Nick Thompson opened the scoring with two goals and Derek Black followed with a hat trick in a little more than 10 minutes. “Sometimes it takes a first half to wear down an opponent before you finish some opportunities,” McCarty said.

NSCAA/adidas Top 25 Rankings:
MEN:
NCAA Division II 1. Tampa, 2 Northern Kentucky, 3. Millersville
NCAA Division III 1. Messiah, 2. Stevens Tech, 3. Amherst

WOMEN:
NCAA Division II 1. Seattle Pacific, 2 West Florida, 3. St. Rose
NCAA Division III 1. Messiah, 2. Puget Sound, 3. Williams

NAIA Women’s Players of the Week
Offense: Sarah Akers, Campbellsville (shutouts against Bluefield and Bryan)
Defense: Kimmia Parker, Rogers State (Jamaican international had six goals in 18-0 win over Bacone)

Offense: Abass Ayembillah, Texas-Brownsville (hat trick in the 5-1 upset over No. 16 Southern Nazarene)
Defense: Tanner Fox, Benedictine (recorded wins over Hastings and Sioux Falls)