8.31 Weekend Preview: All Soccer, All The Time

Since we covered the volleyball team's trip to the Xavier Invitational yesterday, we have one home and one road match to talk about for both men's and women's soccer. Given that's it a long holiday weekend, we'll go all the way through to Monday afternoon with the preview.

Hit the jump and we'll get started with the first home match with men's soccer!

The weekend gets started in the Valley at 7pm tonight as the men's soccer team hosts the UIC Flames (1-1-0). For you students out there, it's Empty The Res Halls Night, so check in with your hall staff to see how to join your building's effort. All students can snag some FREE FOOD from the halftime taco bar provided by Qdoba.

As far as the opposition goes, they'll finish up a three match road swing with this outing. They lost a crosstown contest with DePaul in their opener, but went into Columbus and shut out Ohio State last Sunday. Senior midfielder Ivan Stanisavljevic is the straw that stirs the drink for the Flames. If there's a scoring stat, he led the Horizon League in it last season, and already has a goal and an assist so far this season. Junior Piotr Kikolski has played every minute in net for UIC, making nine saves to go along with an .818 save percentage.

The men will head out to Iowa on Sunday to face Drake (0-2-0) at 2pm. The Bulldogs opened their season with two 1-0 losses in St. Louis, one to Cincinnati and one to the Billikens. They get a chance to get into the win column tonight with their home opener against Loyola (IL), but these will be their only two home matches until their Missouri Valley Conference opener against Creighton on September 29th. For what it's worth, Drake has outshot their opponents so far this season, but it's hard to take that seriously when they haven't scored a goal. Junior keeper Rich Gallagher has played the full 180 minutes for Drake this season, but has only stopped 75% of the shots on frame.

Switching gears to the #12/#8 women's team, they'll head down I-94 to Evanston to face off with Northwestern (2-1-0) tonight at 7pm. In their last outing, the Wildcats scored two goals in 90 seconds, but still lost 5-2 to Dayton. All six Northwestern goals on the season have been scored by three players: junior forward Kate Allen and sophomore midfielders Niki Sebo and Georgia Waddle. Sebo picked up a red card in the Dayton match, but since Northwestern's recap of that match and their preview does not mention anything about it, I presume she will be active tonight. Sophomore keeper Anna Cassell has started all three matches for Northwestern, giving up four goals and making 13 saves. Freshman Rachel Bergman came on in relief for an injured Cassell against Dayton and coughed up three goals in the final 48 minutes.

The women's team returns home for a Labor Day matinee on Monday afternoon at 1pm against Central Michigan (2-1-0). The first 200 students in attendance will get FREE FOOD in the form of pizza from Pizza Hut. The Chippewas are in the midst of a seven match road swing, and due to a lightning cancellation, they'll officially open the season with eight straight road contests. They'll be heading into Milwaukee after a stop in Dayton tonight to face those same Flyers that crushed Northwestern 5-2. I'm not sure what to make of their previous two matches, as they beat the only team to get a Big East win over Marquette last year (West Virginia) and then got smoked by a team that knocked MU out of the NCAA tournament last year (Penn State). CMU has gotten their three goals on the season from three different players. Senior keeper Stefanie Turner has been outstanding in the net, as long as you don't pay attention to four goals in 12 minutes against Penn State.