No. 18 St. Thomas University will host Southeastern University at 7 p.m. Wednesday, Oct. 28, at AutoNation Field in Miami Gardens, Florida. The match is St. Thomas University’s final regular-season contest and will serve as Senior Night. Live video and live statistics will be available for the men’s soccer match.
Senior Night honors 17 players
St. Thomas University will honor 17 seniors during Senior Night festivities. Angelo Bernardes, Santiago Henao and Yanik Keller spent all four of their seasons at St. Thomas. The senior class represents 11 countries and three continents, while Keller leads the group with exactly 3,700 career minutes at the university.
Bernardes also scored in St. Thomas University’s 3-2 victory over Southeastern at AutoNation Field in the teams’ last meeting at the venue. Southeastern won the most recent meeting overall, shutting out St. Thomas 1-0 in Lakeland last season. St. Thomas leads the all-time series 16-5-2.
Two of The Sun Conference’s top defenses
St. Thomas enters after a scoreless draw against SCAD in which it played the final 66 minutes a player down. Maksym Osadchyi received a red card in the 24th minute for a tackle, but St. Thomas allowed only two shots on goal and seven total shots. The defensive effort gives the Bobcats another recent test against one of the conference’s strongest defensive teams.
Southeastern allows 0.93 goals per game, the fewest in The Sun Conference, while St. Thomas is tied with Keiser for second at 1.07. In Sun Conference matches, St. Thomas ranks first in goals allowed per game at 0.86, and Southeastern ranks second at 1.33. St. Thomas goalkeeper Matias Fuentes leads the conference with a 0.97 goals-against average, ranks second with a .706 save percentage and has three shutouts this season.
St. Thomas has 255 shots this season, third in The Sun Conference. Thiago Patto ranks second in the conference with 3.92 shots per game, Angelo Bernardes ranks fifth at 3.18, Julien Laborde ranks seventh at 2.86, and Oscar Le Guillou ranks ninth at 2.82. Those figures give St. Thomas a significant offensive presence to pair with its conference-leading defensive rate in league matches.
Southeastern remains in first-round-bye race
Southeastern entered the match with a 9-2-3 overall record and a 3-1-2 Sun Conference mark. St. Thomas entered at 8-3-3 overall and 4-0-3 in conference play. Southeastern was four points behind St. Thomas in the first-round-bye race and had an additional conference game to play.
Gabriel Sitibaldi is in his first season as Southeastern’s head coach. Koren Klein leads Southeastern with nine goals this season, while Noah Murray-Hawkins allows 1.09 goals per game. The matchup brings together two teams positioned among The Sun Conference’s strongest defensive units while St. Thomas recognizes its senior class at home.
FSB Take
Senior Night adds significance to St. Thomas’ final regular-season match, but the conference positioning gives the contest competitive weight as well. St. Thomas can use its league-leading goals-against rate and home-field setting to challenge a Southeastern team that remains in contention for a first-round bye. The contrast between Southeastern’s nine-goal leader, Koren Klein, and St. Thomas’ defensive profile will be one of the matchup’s clearest focal points.
Source: Original report