Coaching Staff of the year for Dr. David Masur, Dave Janezic & Flo Liu, Masur is a 4X coach of the year since '91, the 3rd such time they took such a trio of awards, the first being 1993, an undefeated season then their 2nd BIg East Title in a row. The other year with the triple was 2008 when they reached their 4th College Cup in 12 years.
Offensive Player of the Year Jani Oluwaseyi and a shared GK award to Jan Hoffelner, highlight the season awards as the playoffs begin this evening.This team who we have been out to see a number of times this year had 13 wins and an all but season long perch in the nations top 10 programs, bolsterd by 6 All Confernece Players. With half a dozen named to the various BIg East Teams, they tied for 2nd with the '03, '94 & NCAA Champs 1996, trailing only the 1993 team which had 8, wow! The team doubled their win total of last year and were picked to finish #7 in the Big East, instead they went 13-3-1, 6-2-1 in the Big East, 7 weeks in the top 10, ranked 9 out of 12 weeks. 2 of their losses came at the feet of top 25 teams and the other, Providence is now 21, SJU has been noo lower than 6th in the RPI and one of a few team in the top 25 in goals and gaa with 2.06 scored and .75 allowed.
Their first Offensive Player of the Year since 1996 their title year and Kulego taking it then, and with other soph, Huey Furgeson to take that allocade, Tani has 10 goals, good for #33 nationaly, 6 in the Big East and overall 5 GWG, quite the clutch player. He now joins Salinmo from the College Cup year of 2003 to get 10 or more goals , his 3 out of 4 assists came in Big East contests, not entering the starting 11 until the 13 game of the year, quite the super sub.
GK Hoffelner with all 17 starts, split time with Luka Gavran and together put up some scary #'s for the opposition, He is #13 with his .63GAA, 11th with a save pct. of .813, playing in 9 blank sheets, including the first against Butler Sept. 28 . The transfer from Presbyterian is very vocal and helped the young defense of the team to gel.
Skage Simonsen is on the 2nd Big East Team for the 2nd straight year, '18 his frosh year was terrific with 6 goals and 4 assists as Rookie of the Year, he stepped it up this year. His half dozen assists, was just one shy of the top in the Conference, assisting on half of Tani's assists, he also chipped in a pair of goals giving him spot #4 on his team with 10 points.
Brandon Duarte had both goals and 2 of this 3 assists in the Big East games. He netted the first SJU goal in Big East play during a 3-1 win over Xavier, then his header put the win away hosting DePaul to take the BIg East bye into the semi. In his 2nd year in Red & White out of Ancilla College, he was was great on the defensive end as well as a mid and fullback.
2 sophs made the 2nd team, Brandon Knapp earned his first Big East accolade with 3 goals and 1 assist, a brace facing Columbia in Sept. He was the soph. captain with a key role setting up and running the efforts on both sides of the ball. Just last week he was fetted for his classroom work, geting on the CoSIDA Academic All-District First Team.
Lastly Einar Lye the other 2nd year player, he hit for 5 goals and 4 assists, 2nd in both goals and points, 3 of them were in Big East contests with a 2nd brace against Villanova and another strike at home v Depaul, the GWG on a PK.