The Plymouth State Men’s Soccer program has been turning heads as they’ve won three out of the last four games and moved into 3rd place in the Little East Conference after a home win against UMass Dartmouth last weekend (Oct. 18). The win, which marked the Panthers third conference victory, also headlined win number 100 for Coach Rob Wright, who is in his 13th season at PSU.
“The guys have been playing well recently, and Saturday's win over UMD was a solid performance against a strong team. We've started to score on a regular basis with 9 [goals] in our last 3 games, so hopefully our offense will continue to fire,” said Coach Wright. Nothing he said was untrue as freshman Nick Rutherford (Batesman Bay, New South Wales) fed a crisp pass to junior Alex Hebert (Lexington, MA) who directed the ball past UMD keeper Luis Carranza in the 28th minute to open up the scoring. Within 5 minutes of the opening tip of the second half, junior Senad Mehmedovic (Concord, N.H.) put in a goal with a free kick off a deflection.
Although UMD had a 10-6 shot advantage over Plymouth, keeper Felix Lindeberg (Stockholm, Sweden) made five saves and only allowed one shot through, which came in the 73rd minute. Corsair keeper Luis Carranza picked up two saves of his own.
The Panthers play two regionally ranked, out-of-conference teams within the next two weeks, one being against third ranked Tufts on Oct. 22.
When asked about the remainder of the season, Coach Wright said, “In-conference, anything could happen. We sit third, with the first and second placed teams to play in our remaining games. Both are strong, and we could still finish anywhere in the top five spots.”