Duke makes first visit to Harder Stadium

Luis Silva gave the Gauchos a huge conference victory on Tuesday with a climatic game-winning goal. (Vince Agapito photo).

Another Friday night, another big match for the UCSB men’s soccer team.

No. 19-ranked Duke of the Atlantic Coast Conference travels cross country to play the Gauchos in a nationally televised match at 8 p.m. at Harder Stadium. The game will be shown on the Fox Soccer Channel.

UCSB (6-3-2) has played Davidson, Harvard and UCLA in its previous Friday matches this season. They’re 2-0-1, tying Davidson at home, beating Harvard at the New Mexico Tournament and blanking UCLA at Harder Stadium before the largest on-campus home crowd for soccer in NCAA history.

Another big crowd is expected tonight to see the Gauchos take on a team from arguably the top conference in college soccer.

“You’re talking about a very good team that’s very well-coached and has very good players, particularly with that forward they have,” UCSB coach Tim Vom Steeg said.

That forward is sophomore Ryan Finley, one of the top goal-scorers in the country with 10 goals.

He’ll go up against a Gaucho defense that gets goalkeeper Sam Hayden and central defender Michael Boxall back on the field. Both seniors were serving suspensions for red cards.

Duke comes to Santa Barbara with 5-2-4 record. In the first RPI list of Division 1 teams released Thursday, the Blue Devils are 15th while UCSB is ranked 53rd.

The NCAA selection committee uses the RPI power ranking to help pick the 48-team tournament field.

UCSB and Duke have NCAA history. In 2004, the Gauchos scored one of the most lopsided wins in College Cup history, blowing out the Blue Devils 5-0 at the Home Depot Center in Carson. They lost to Indiana in the final in a penalty-kick shootout.

Duke is coached by former national player of the year John Kerr. He led the Blue Devils to a national championship in 1986 and then became the first American player to sign with an English Premier League team, Portsmouth.

Kerr returned to his alma mater last year after a successful coaching stint at Harvard. He replaced his old coach, John Rennie, who had been there 29 years.

Besides Finley, the Blue Devils have another exciting player in Cole Grossman, who has three goals and five assists.

Their goalkeeper, James Belsaw of England, is having a good year with a goals-against average of 0.45 and four shutouts.

The Gauchos have played against some hot goalkeepers of late. On Tuesday, Cal Poly’s Patrick McLain stopped 11 shots, but UCSB managed to pull out a 2-1.

Vom Steeg said handling the frustration of having great scoring chances stopped and playing without a few starters due to suspensions and injuries has helped make his team mentally tougher.

“I like this team,” he said. “I feel I can take them anywhere because we’ve been through the wars.”
Vom Steeg expects an entertaining game Friday.

“It’ll be a great game,” he said. “You don’t really want to miss Friday night at Harder Stadium.”

The men’s game is the nightcap of a soccer doubleheader. The UCSB women play UC Davis in a Big West match at 5 p.m.

The doubleheader has been declared as Gauchos Kick Cancer event. The women’s and men’s team will wear pink ribbon patches on their uniforms.

“The inspiration to have a cancer awareness event came from two different sources,” said women’s head coach Paul Stumpf. “We have a women’s soccer alum that is a breast cancer survivor and recently one of our player’s mothers passed away from cancer.

“We are really excited to be holding this event and are hoping a lot of people come out to the game. It is important for us to raise awareness about this devastating disease not just to our fans, but for our own student-athletes so they are reminded to take care of themselves and to seek out early detection.”

Santa Barbara Cancer Center has partnered with UCSB Athletics for the event and will be handing out information at the game. Additionally, pink wristbands will be given away to fans.

NOTES: UCSB set another NCAA soccer attendance record on Tuesday night. The 6,057 fans who attended Tuesday night 2-1 win over Cal Poly made the Gauchos the first team to draw three crowds of more than 6,000 in one regular season.
The single-game mark of 15,896 for UCLA and 6,449 for UC Davis are the other two on the record list.? ?UCSB’s average of 6,098 fans a game is on pace to break the modern NCAA soccer record.
Akron, the top-ranked team in all the college soccer polls, is No. 1 on the RPI list. The Zips are 9-0-1 and have beaten top 25 teams like North Carolina, Tulsa, Ohio State and Penn State.
SMU, North Carolina, Ohio State, Michigan State round out the top five. They’re followed by Louisville, Maryland, William & Mary, Butler and College of Charleston.
Cal is the highest ranked team in the West at No. 13. UCLA is 20th, Loyola Marymount 36th and UC Irvine 41st. Also ranked ahead of the Gauchos are St. Mary’s (48), Cal State Bakersfield (49) and Sacramento State (50).