Multiple Weekly Honors For Both UConn Soccer Teams

Men’s Soccer won both matches this week, beating Rhode Island 2-1 in Kingston on Wednesday before coming back to Morrone Stadium for their conference opener on Saturday against Temple. UConn notched its third clean sheet of the season, defeating the Owls 1-0.

Three Huskies were mentioned in the AAC Week 5 awards. Scott Levene earned goalkeeper of the week, Jake Nerwinski was named defensive player of the week, and Abdou Mbacke Thiam was listed on the honor roll.

Levene played all 180 minutes for UConn this week, only allowing one goal late in the game against the Rams. The Huskies were up 2-0 at that point before the goal in the 84th minute. Levene registered six saves that night and had five more in the shut out victory over Temple.

Nerwinski was a big part of the defensive effort this week, but also was able to help offensively as well, scoring a goal in the 78th minute of the match against Rhode Island that would end up being the game-winner. It was his second goal of the season.

Mbacke Thiam has been on fire since returning from his hamstring injury and the conference has taken note. He opened the scoring in the 14th minute against Rhode Island and tallied the only goal against Temple off of a corner kick in the 64th minute.

For the women’s team, Stephanie Ribeiro was named Player of the Week while Rachel Hill and Kristen Vinciguerra were both named to the weekly honor roll.

Ribeiro had her best performance of the season against Fordham in the Huskies’ only game this week, where she had a hand in every goal with three assists and a goal in the 4-1 win, including the game-winner.

Vinciguerra scored the opening goal off a cross from Rachel Hill that was deflected to her by Stephanie Ribeiro. Hill scored the fourth and final goal of the game off a free kick from Ribeiro.

The UConn men (6-3-0, 1-0-0) will travel to Rhode Island for the second straight week for a date with Providence on Wednesday at 7 p.m. The UConn women (8-2-0) open up the conference schedule next Sunday at 1 p.m. against the Tulsa Golden Hurricane.