It’s All About the Conference Chase

THIS WEEK: Pacific Lutheran opens its Northwest Conference schedule this weekend with a pair of road games in Oregon. The Lutes face the Willamette Bearcats in Salem at 2:30 p.m. Saturday and battle the Linfield Wildcats in McMinnville at 2:30 p.m. Sunday.

PRESEASON POLL: Northwest Conference coaches picked the Lutes to finish third in the conference, though just one point behind Puget Sound. Whitworth is the unanimous favorite to win its third straight NWC championship. Linfield was picked to finish sixth, followed by Willamette.

ABOUT THE BEARCATS: Willamette comes into its conference opener with a 1-4 overall record, though it has scored as many goals (five) as it has yielded. The Bearcats have registered four 1-0 losses (Corban, Oregon Tech, No. 23-ranked North Park and Chapman) and a 5-1 win (Simpson). Five different players scored in that game. The goalkeeper duties have been pretty evenly split between Mark Bennett and Bradley Eckerson. Pacific Lutheran has had quite a bit of success in recent seasons against the Willamette Bearcats, winning eight straight by a combined score of 29-1. Last year's matches were close, however, with PLU pulling out 1-0 and 2-0 victories. The last Willamette win in the series came on Nov. 5, 2004, by a 1-0 margin in double overtime.

ABOUT THE WILDCATS: Linfield is 1-3-1 this season entering its weekend matches against Puget Sound and PLU. The Wildcats have been outscored 9-6, though their most recent result was a nice 3-2 win over a tough Redlands team from the Southern California Intercollegiate Athletic Conference. Travis Isaacs has two goals and an assist to lead the ‘Cats in scoring this year, and Jon Thompson, with a 1.68 goals against average, has seen most of the action between the pipes.

A NICE ROLL FOR AUGUSTIN: Forward Spencer Augustin is on a nice roll with a goal in each of the Lutes' last three matches. The sophomore from Anchorage, Alaska, leads the team in both goals and points and has already tied his season goal-scoring output from a year ago.

ANDY FOR HYRES: Before the start of the season, PLU head coach John Yorke had this to say about midfielder Andy Hyres - "Andy Hyres is one of the best passers in the conference and will do at least one thing with the ball each game that makes it worth watching him play." The senior midfielder from Wilkeson leads his team with three assists, and the one goal he has scored proved to be match winner in PLU's 3-2 overtime win against St. Thomas.

LUTES SPLIT IN SPOKANE: Pacific Lutheran ended its pre-conference schedule last weekend with a split of two games at the Whitworth Invitational. PLU defeated two-time Ohio Athletic Conference champion Capital, 3-2 in overtime, before dropping a 3-1 decision to Saint Martin's.

PLU 3, CAPITAL 2: Chad Kearns scored in the eighth minute of overtime, giving Pacific Lutheran a 3-2 win over Capital for its third consecutive men's soccer victory. The final score was indicative of the closely contested match as both teams ended up with 17 shots, the Lutes putting 12 on frame and Capital notching 10 shots on goal. The Lutes opened the back-and-forth scoring just 5:05 into the match when sophomore midfielder Surafel Wodajo tallied his first goal of the season, finishing a short crossing pass from Jason Bjorgo. The Crusaders' Steven McCarthy responded with the first of his two goals at 9:39. PLU broke the 1-1 halftime deadlock on Spencer Augustin's second goal of the season, the assist again going to Bjorgo. McCarthy tied it at 73:03, and the match went into overtime. Capital had a chance to win it near the end of regulation time, but PLU junior goalkeeper Brian Kostol stopped McCarthy's breakaway effort. Kostol finished the match with eight saves.

SAINT MARTIN'S 3, PLU 1: Spencer Augustin scored his team-high third goal of the season for Pacific Lutheran on Saturday but the Lutes came out on the short end of a 3-1 decision to Saint Martin's. The Saints took a 2-0 lead after 49 minutes on goals by Conner Biggs and Xan Nixon. Augustin scored at 59:26 on an assist from Andy Hyres, but the Saints tallied five minutes later on Ruben Orozco's goal to put the game away. Both teams finished the contest with 15 shots. Kostol started in goal for the Lutes, allowing two goals and making two saves in 54 minutes of action. Deming gave up one goal and had two saves in the final 36 minutes.

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