WASHINGTON – The No. 19, and second-seeded, Georgetown University men's soccer squad will host the fourth-seeded Marquette University Golden Eagles in the BIG EAST Conference Championship game on Sunday afternoon at 2 p.m. at Shaw Field. The Hoyas are currently 11-4-3 on the season.
Sunday's contest will be broadcast live on FS2 with John Fanta on play-by-play and Jamie Watson as the color analyst. The game will also be available on FOX Sports Go. Live stats will be available at www.GUHoyas.com.
The Hoyas advanced to the championship with a 4-0 victory over third-seeded Providence on Wednesday afternoon at Shaw Field in the league semifinal. Three second half goals, including two from senior
Ethan Lochner (New York, N.Y. / Stuyvesant) just 33 seconds apart, sealed the victory as the Blue & Gray advanced to its third championship in four seasons. Beyond Lochner's pair of goals, senior captain
Kyle Zajec (Westport, Conn. / Staples) connected on a penalty kick and junior
Riley Strassner managed his third goal of the season in the win.
Last week, junior defender
Dylan Nealis (Massapequa, N.Y. / Massapequa) was named the BIG EAST Defensive Player of the Year as seven different Hoyas earned BIG EAST season honors. Nealis joined sophomore forward
Derek Dodson (Aurora, Ill. / Waubonsie Valley) and junior forward
Achara (Enugu, Nigeria / Berkshire School [Mass.]) on the first team, while senior captains
Brendan McDonough (Matthews, N.C. / Charlotte Catholic) and Zajec were each named to the second team. Freshman goalkeeper
Giannis Nikopolidis (Athens, Greece / Nea Genia Zirdi) joined classmate
Sean Zawadzki (Olmsted Falls, Ohio / Olmsted Falls) on the BIG EAST All-Freshman team.
Dodson is leading the team in scoring with 19 points on nine goals and one assist for the year. Zajec is second with four goals and six assists for 14 points, while
Achara has six goals and one assist for 13 points. Lochner has managed three goals and four assists for 10 points, and Nealis rounds out the top five with a goal and a team-high seven assists for nine points on the year. Nikopolidis has played in 15 games and tallied 53 saves with a 0.75 GAA.
Marquette pulled off a second-consecutive penalty kick victory to advance to the BIG EAST Championship final for the first time since winning the tournament in 2013. Luka Prpa has five goals in his last seven games, including the equalizer on Wednesday. His goal in the 25th minute was his 17th career goal and 51st career point in his 50th cap and it came less than two minutes after Creighton took a 1-0 lead. Neither side scored after that and penalty kicks decided a winner. Luis Barraza, who finished with eight saves in 110 minutes, stopped two of the first four Creighton attempts. Josh Coan finished off the shootout in style with a low right-footed strike inside the left post.
The Hoyas are 12-1-3 all-time against the Golden Eagles and 7-0-1 at home. Earlier this year, the squads played to a scoreless tie on a rain-soaked field in Milwaukee. The last meeting on the Hilltop was a 2-1 victory during the 2017 season. All three goals in the game came in the first 16 minutes of action as
Declan McCabe's goal at 15:36 proved to be the game winner.
The Hoyas are 16-19-5 overall in the BIG EAST Tournament and 10-1-1 at home as well as 2-4-0 in the championship game. Georgetown is 2-0 all-time against the Golden Eagles in the tourney, winning the last meeting in the 2014 quarterfinal, 2-1. The other meeting was a 2-1 double overtime Hoya victory in 2012.
Tickets are available online at WeAreGeorgetown.com/menssoccerbet. All Georgetown students will be admitted into the game for free.
To watch online, download the FOX Sports GO app for iOS, Android, Kindle Fire tablets and phones and select Windows devices to view games on-the-go. The app also supports Roku, Apple TV and Chromecast. The FOX Sports GO platform can also be accessed at FOXSportsGO.com on desktops. A cable provider's login is required to access FOXSportsGO on a desktop.
