ORLANDO – Off to its best start since 2011 and an owner of the highest national ranking in program history, the No. 3 UCF men’s soccer team is readying for one of its toughest scheduled matchups of the fall slate.
Just eight days after the then-No. 5 Knights made history by partaking in the first top five matchup in UCF athletics history, a 2-2 draw with then-No. 4 West Virginia Sept. 15, the squad will travel to Huntington, West Virginia for a clash with the newly-minted No. 1 Marshall Thundering Herd for the first top three battle in school history Saturday night.
The third-ranked Knights, the top-ranked Thundering Herd and the No. 2 Mountaineers all climbed at least one spot in the latest United Soccer Coaches week four poll Tuesday evening following then-No. 1 Stanford’s loss to Oregon State Sunday night. In the latest iteration of the poll, the three Sun Belt programs represent the top three nationally-ranked teams in the nation entering play this weekend.
For the Knights, their Friday tilt with West Virginia represented the latest occasion that saw the team rise to the occasion against a higher-ranked opponent. UCF twice fell behind by a one-goal margin during the match, and both times answered with a score of its own before holding West Virginia scoreless throughout the final 45 minutes.
Following the hotly-contested match, the Knights sport a 4-0-2 overall record through their first six games this season, including a 1-0-2 record against ranked foes, all of which were slotted within the top 11 teams in the country at the time of the match.
Against the Mountaineers, UCF benefitted from production from its active leading career goal-scorer, as well as a veteran defender who tallied the fifth goal of his career. After the visitors broke the ice just 63 seconds into the match, senior forward Lucca Dourado netted his fourth goal of the season and 32nd of his career off a feed from defender AJ Seals just in front of the goal line, tying the match at one.
West Virginia took its second lead of the night with another quick score, just one minute and 33 seconds after Dourado’s goal, but the Knights again evened the score just over 11 minutes later.
Fifth-year defender Zane Bubb came through with a perfectly-placed header directly off a corner kick by freshman Saku Heiskanen. The score marked Bubb’s first in his two seasons in a Knights uniform, and his first since April 17, 2021 with Virginia Tech.
Starting goalkeeper Juanvi Muñoz handled the rest, turning aside four of the six total shots on goal he faced by the Mountaineers. The Knights, on the other end, were up to the challenge presented by a notoriously-stingy West Virginia defensive scheme, as UCF’s six shots on goal marked the most allowed by the Mountaineers in a single match this fall, and just the second time that West Virginia yielded at least five shots on target.
The Knights also became the first team this season to net multiple goals in a single match against West Virginia. The Mountaineers had yielded only one goal in their previous five matches combined, and in their first match since the draw with UCF, topped Dayton by a 1-0 final score Sept. 19.
Bubb’s score in the 34th minute only added on to an already balanced UCF offensive attack thus far, as the defender became the eighth unique Knights goal-scorer through the team’s first six matches. UCF enters its weekend matchup with Marshall with a share of third place in the Sun Belt and 38th in the nation in total goals (13), and the team also ranks third in the Sun Belt and 35th nationally in total points per game (5.83).
The Knights will also be playing for a special milestone, as head coach Scott Calabrese remains one win shy of 150 in his 16-year coaching career. Following the Knights’ draw with West Virginia, Calabrese moved to 149-98-30 (.592) between his stops with UCF, Florida International and East Tennessee State.
Marshall, meanwhile, will represent only the second top-ranked opponent UCF has faced in program history, and the first since the Knights played to a 2-2 draw with then-No. 1 SMU Oct. 14, 2006. The Thundering Herd boast a spotless 7-0-0 record entering the weekend matchup, highlighted by wins over then-(RV) Pittsburgh and then-No. 9 James Madison.
Marshall has outscored its opposition by an aggregate 25-3 thus far, including four clean sheets. The group has outshot its opposition by a combined 125-62, including a total of 57 shots on goal to 19. Five Thundering Herd players have recorded at least two goals to this point, including redshirt-freshman midfielder Marco Silva’s team-leading seven scores and sophomore forward Matthew Bell’s six.
Between the goalposts, Gabriel Perrotta has handled the majority of Marshall’s 630 minutes in net, yielding only three goals on 61 total shots faced, good for a 0.43 goals-against average and an .833 save percentage. Perrotta, who has logged 623:55 on the field so far, has made a total of 15 saves en route to his spotless 7-0-0 record, including a trio of solo shutouts.
Kickoff for the Knights’ Saturday evening tilt is scheduled for 7:15 p.m. from Hoops Family Field in Huntington, West Virginia.
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