ROCK HILL, SC—The Winthrop men's soccer team will play its final three games of the regular season on the road beginning with 24
th-ranked Coastal Carolina, Wednesday evening at 6 p.m.
Winthrop's unbeaten streak of eight games came to an end last Saturday in a double-overtime loss to High Point at home. Getting back on track won't be an easy task with the final three regular season games on the road. Winthrop is in a battle for one of the top four spots in the standings and a home game for the first round of the conference tournament. After facing Coastal Carolina on Wednesday, the Eagles will travel to Campbell on Saturday and then finish the regular season on Wednesday, Nov. 5 at Radford.
The loss to High Point drops the Eagles to 10-3-1 on the year and 4-1-1 in the league. Winthrop looks to match last year's win total against the Chanticleers on a field they've had some recent success on. The Eagles are 2-3 in the last five games played at Coastal, but have lost the last three by a single goal.
This will mark the 10
th time Winthrop has faced a nationally-ranked Chanticleer squad as Winthrop head coach
Rich Posipanko is 3-6 in those matchups. All-Time the Eagles have a 2-21-1 record against Top 25 opponents.
Sophomore
Max Hasenstab has been red hot offensively over the last few weeks as he's scored a point in four of the last five games he's played. He had two goals and an assist in last week's action and now has a team-high seven goals despite missing five games this season. He is second on the team with 14 points in eight games (seven starts). Senior
Pol Sole leads the Eagles in scoring with five goals and five assists as he's started and played in all 13 games. Junior
Magnus Thorsson remains third on the team in scoring with five goals and an assist.
The Eagles enter the game ranked third nationally in goals per game at 2.50 while Coastal Carolina is 15th in the country at 2.07 per game. Winthrop currently leads the Big South in scoring, total goals, points per game and total points. Coastal Carolina leads the league total assists and assists per game.
Wednesday's matchup will feature some of the best players in the league with five players ranked in the top 10 of the league in scoring. This game will feature 10 of the Top 20 players in the Big South according to TopDrawersoccer.com's midseason rankings.
The high profile attack of Coastal Carolina is led by senior Ricky Garbanzo and sophomore Sergio Carmargo. Garbanzo is ranked as the top player in the Big South by TopDrawersoccer.com's midseason ranking. He had a goal against the Eagles in the 3-1 regular season victory last season and currently has three goals and five assists. Carmargo, who had two goals in the Chanticleer's 2-1 victory over Winthrop in the first round of the 2013 Big South Tournament, has four goals and four assists on the year.
There are a total of seven players on the roster with three or more goals as the scoring has been very balanced with 11 different goal scorers.
Defensively Coastal has been strong allowing 0.98 goals per game behind the play of Devin Cooke-Perales, who is 7-4 in net with a 1.15 goals against average with three shutouts. The backline features Uchenna Uzo and preseason Defensive Player of the Year Shawn McLaws.
This will mark the 48
th meeting between Winthrop and Coastal as the series favors the Chanticleers 27-17-3. The Eagles have lost two straight to the Chanticleers and two straight in Conway.
