ORLANDO – In the first meeting between the two schools, the match between the No. 6 UCF men’s soccer team and the Brown University Bears did not disappoint.
One game after becoming just the seventh Knight to reach 30 career goals, forward Lucca Dourado put the Knights on the board 1-0 with his third goal of the season. After a handball in the box in the second half, defender Anderson Rosa put the ball in the back of the net on a penalty kick to put the Knights up 2-0. The Knights improved to 4-0-1 on the season with their 2-0 win.
“Lucca is just a special guy, being together now for five years, we went to high school together, we came here together, I love seeing the guy succeeding and scoring goals,” Rosa said. “He cuts to the right, he can score, he cuts to the left, he can score. He is just a special player, and I am so happy for him.”
The Bears kept things close in the first half with the Knights, who recorded just four shots, just one of which on goal. Brown, meanwhile, notched three shots, only one on goal. UCF picked things up in the second half with seven shot attempts versus the Bears’ two. Knights starting goalkeeper, Juanvi Muñoz, had two saves on the night to wrap UCF’s first clean sheet of the season and the third of his two-year career.
“If we see that we are winning, we have to control the game and be patient, build up and don’t get nervous, and we did it today so that was good,” Muñoz said.
Dourado led the Knights with three shots, putting one of those in the back of the net, assisted by midfielder AJ Seals. Rosa and forward Clarence Awoudor followed with two shots each.
Head coach Scott Calabrese was happy with his team and its physicality in the match, one that represented the squad’s third in a busy week-plus stretch since September 1.
“It is really difficult to play as many games as we have played in this window, it just takes a lot of energy every single game, emotionally and physically,” Calabrese said. “To be able to get the win after our fifth match in a really short window, that’s really good,”
With the winning effort, Calabrese is also now one game shy of eclipsing 150 wins in his 16-year coaching career. Calabrese in his 16 years of coaching, including his seventh with the Knights, now has a record of 149-98-29.
After close to a week of preparation, the Knights will return to action in what will represent the first Sun Belt Conference match in program history when the team welcomes the West Virginia Mountaineers to Orlando Sept. 15. Kickoff for the contest is slated for 7 p.m.