Men's Soccer Begins Home Ledger with Penn State, UNC Asheville

Friday, September 1

Irvine, CA

7:00 PM

UC Irvine

Penn State

Buy Tickets

Men's Soccer Begins Home Ledger with Penn State, UNC Asheville

August 29, 2017 | Men's Soccer

Game Notes

By: Alex Croteau

UPCOMING OPPONENTS

Game Notes | Game Program

Penn State Nittany Lions (0-1-0) at UC Irvine Anteaters
Friday, September 1, 2017 - 7:00 PM
Anteater Stadium - Irvine, Calif.
Live Stats | Tickets

UNC Asheville Bulldogs (0-1-0) at UC Irvine Anteaters
Sunday, September 3, 2017 - 7:00 PM
Anteater Stadium - Irvine, Calif.
Live Stats | Tickets

FIRST TOUCHES
6 - The 'Eaters put home 6 goals last week, their best week since 2015 when they had a pair of 7-goal weeks. The 5 goals vs. NKU are the most since defeating UCR, 5-1, in October of 2015. The rest of the Big West only scored 7 goals total over last week

52nd - Junior keeper Greg Patenaude saved his first career PK in the 52nd minute of the win over Northern Kentucky marking the third straight season an Anteater has made a PK stop (2015 - Farmer vs. CSUN (89'), 2016 - Waldron at Oregon State (75'))

4 - UCI had 4 other notable firsts happen in Sunday's win: head coach Yossi Raz collected his first Division I win, Erick Gallinar and Ateno Ajeakwa each recorded their first career points, and Greg Patenaude sealed his first career win

LAST WEEK RECAP
The regular season started on the road at the home of No. 9 Louisville last week. Despite Louisville controlling much of the early going, UCI scored first as Mario Ortiz sent home a free kick from the edge of the box in the 21st minute. The Cardinals answered with a pair of goals in the 25th and 29th minutes taking the 2-1 lead into the half. Louisville held the statistical advantage throughout, but UCI's defense kept them in it. Ortiz's last-minute equalizer chance sailed just over the crossbar for the 2-1 final.

Sunday was a different story as UC Irvine scored in the fourth, seventh, 14th, and 19th minutes to steamroll to a 4-0 halftime lead. The lead grew to 5-0 before Northern Kentucky pulled back a pair for the final score of 5-2 and the season's first victory.

As part of the offensive efforts, Luis Leon earned Big West Offensive Player of the Week award by leading the team with three points on a goal and an assist. The honor is his first with the program, and the team's first weekly honor since the final week of 2015.

SCOUTING THE OPPONENTS
The home portion of the 2017 schedule opens with some solid competition traveling from the East Coast, and a pair of opponents matching up with the 'Eaters for the first time.

Penn State reaches California for the second straight year after opening 2016 at Cal and Stanford. Their season opener was a 1-0 home loss to Hofstra as the Nittany Lions are coming off an 8-8-2 campaign last year, but have been a historic powerhouse taking home 11 National Titles with 48 All-Americans to its name. The team returns 19 players in all, but Aymar Sigue is the only to bring multiple goals from last season. Team captain and junior defender Dani Marks paces the squad while Evan Finney and Arie Ammann will battle for time in net as each keeper is a past conference player of the week.

UNC Asheville of the Horizon League completes the weekend. The Bulldogs have been shutout in its exhibitions - 5-0 to Wright State and 1-0 to ETSU - along with its opener - 3-0 to season Marshall. UNCA won six games last year and still narrowly missed a conference title. They're led by former LMU coach, Mathes Mennell, who is bringing the Bulldogs out of the Eastern Time Zone for the first time in over 13 years. Zach Joens departs after scoring eight of their 21 goals as does Chris Katt who played all 18 games in net. Senior defender Zack Compton and midfielder Andrew Lawrence return with 14 points between the two from 2016.

COACH'S CORNER
On last week's road trip to Kentucky — "It's always difficult going on the road, especially those environments. Distance, time zones, climate, on top of the debuts for many players and an introduction to what NCAA soccer is. All-in-all, we're very pleased with the results we brought back. I feel that we were a bit timid at Louisville and were not playing to our best capacity even though we scored early, and maybe the clock ran away from us later at the end. At Northern Kentucky, we started on our front foot, were more aggressive and comfortable, and the result showed. You take a lot of lessons from the weekend. No quality team in the NCAA gives up four goals in a weekend regardless of home or away and we will get better there."

On opening the home slate — "We feel very lucky that our home opener is against such quality programs. Mathes and Bob are both running excellent programs, but like in the past we're going to take it one game at a time and show progress from last week against Penn State, and then regroup for another quality program and UNC Asheville and continue to show that progress as the season moves along."

On Luis Leon winning Big West Offensive Player of the Week — "Luis is a very talented offensive player. I'm not surprised that when he's on the field, we are dangerous going forward. I'm happy for him. I praised him for his quality, and besides the goal and assist, he had other quality moments and produced for others. Like everyone, he needs to work on some things to make himself and the team better, but we're going to take that and move on and help showcase everyone's talent within the program."

THROW-INS
+ UC Irvine will matchup with both Penn State and UNC Asheville for the first time ever. Adding Sunday's match with Northern Kentucky, that will be three consecutive first-time matchups.
+ The 'Eaters fired 13.26 shots per game and put 6.16 on goal per match which led the conference in 2016. They lead the Big West so far with 15.5 shots per game and 6.5 on target
+ Giovanni Godoy is second in the Big West so far with 1.5 shots on goal per game. In 2016, he led the conference with 2.5 shots per game and 1.39 shots on goal per game
+ Seven players have three or more shots through the season's first two matches while five players have turned at least two on frame
+ In 2016, Alex Waldron and Elliot Farmer split time in net with each starting at least seven matches and putting in over 600 minutes. The last time two keepers played as much in a season was 2009 when Andrew Fontein and Victor Chinchilla each started 11 matches and logged nearly 1,000 minutes
+ The Big West South has a very connected coaching tree. Head Coach Yossi Raz spent nine years as an assistant coach at CSUN in addition to his time as a student-athlete for the program. Assistant Brian Lanoye spent eight years with Cal State Fullerton as an assistant coach along with a grad and undergrad assistant. Cal State Fullerton's head coach, George Kuntz, spent 19 seasons as head coach for the Anteaters and is joined by former Anteater coach and player, Carlos Aguilar, and another fellow player, Kyle Schmid. UC Riverside recently hired Chris Volk as its assistant coach after Volk spent 20 years as a coach with the UC Irvine program which included 17 years as an assistant coach and the last three years as the head coach.