Soccer Gets Back to PSUAC Play vs. New Kensington
McKeesport, PA. – With the regular season coming down to its final two weeks, the Penn State Greater Allegheny Soccer team (1-6-1, 0-4-1) gets back to Penn State University Athletic Conference play when they head on the road to face Penn State New Kensington (6-4, 5-1) on Wednesday at 4 p.m. PSUGA is looking to finish out the season strong as they try to stay alive in the PSUAC Playoff race for the sixth straight season.
PSUGA fell last time out to PSU-Beaver 6-0 and, despite the score, PSUGA fought hard throughout the game. They held a high-powered PSU-Beaver offense off the board for the first 17 minutes of the game before allowing the first goal of the afternoon at the 23-minute mark. They went into half time trailing 3-0, but the injury bug bit them in the second half and they eventually fell 6-0.
Freshman Derek Huang (Kaohsiung Taiwan, Kaohsiung American School) led the offense taking the team’s only shot of the game and landing it on net. Haung is a perfect three for three in shot efficiency and is one of three PSUGA players featuring a 1.000 SOG percentage this season. Junior Colin Bucsok (Pittsburgh, PA./Thomas Jefferson HS) got the start in goal playing the entire 90 minutes and coming up with 10 saves on 16 shots on goal.
With the loss, PSUGA fell to 0-3-1 in PSUAC play and a forfeit to PSU-Brandywine over the weekend brought their conference record down to 0-4-1. However, there are five other teams with four losses in the PSUAC keeping PSUGA’s playoff hopes alive. They would have to win out over the team’s final four games and look for some help as the mad dash for the final two playoff spots begins.
One of the teams on the fast track to the PSUAC playoffs is PSU-New Kensington, who enters Wednesday’s game with a record of 5-1 in conference action. PSU-New Kensington has won five straight games entering Wednesday’s game including a 5-0 win over PSU-York their last time out. It took New Kensington just 10 minutes to get on the board when Benjamin Midlik found the net to make it a 1-0 game. Four different New Kensington players would score goals on the way to the victory.
Previous Match-ups
In seven previous match-ups with Penn State New Kensington, PSUGA has a record of 4-3 in those games. Their most recent match-up came on September 19th, 2018 when PSUGA scored a 4-0 win. Former Lion Belmo Nurkic led the way with two goals in the game on four shots while Bucsok made five saves on five shots on goal in the win.
Kick-off for Wednesday’s game is scheduled for 4 p.m. and will be played on the Penn State New Kensington campus.