Wheeling, W. Va. – With Homecoming & Family weekend in the rearview mirror, the race is on for the 2023 Mountain East Conference (MEC) Tournament. The Wheeling University Men's Soccer team (0-10-1, 0-8-1) looks to climb their way back into the tournament race when they take on West Virginia Wesleyan Wednesday at 7:30 PM. The offense has been creating more and more scoring opportunities as of late and they look to continue that progression at Bishop Schmitt Field.
Wheeling Men's Soccer is hoping that they can bounce back from Saturday's game against Charleston and get in the win column for the first time this season and that is not an unreasonable goal with Wheeling having a slight edge coming into Wednesday's game. They have won two of the last three games against West Virginia Wesleyan as they look to earn their third straight win in the all-time matchup. This matchup dates back to 2002 and they have played each other a total of thirty-seven times with Wheeling winning ten, losing twenty, and tying seven times across those meetings.
Wheeling will need some much-needed goal-scoring if they are going to win on Wednesday and they will be looking to TJ Cherry and Johannes Haugerud who led the team in goals with two and shots with five, so if those two can chip in offensively it will give the team a good chance to win. Haugerud put together his first multi-goal effort against Concord back on October 4th, and over his last four games, Haugerud has taken three or more shots in three of those four contests, totaling eight shots during the run. Of those eight shots, five have gone on goal for a .625 shots on goal percentage. He looks to continue his success as he and fellow freshmen Julio D'Lima and Rocco LiTrenta look to lead the offense.
Goaltending is also an element of this team that will need to be good if they plan on winning on Wednesday and this will come from either Austin Aaron or Carlos Molina. Molina has seen the bulk of the starts in net for the Cardinals this season and has made 27 saves while sporting a .563 save percentage. On the other side, Austin Aaron has made a return from injury and, in four starts this season, has made 19 saves, and produced a .543 save percentage. Wheeling goalkeepers have made the third most saves across the conference, entering play on Wednesday with 46 saves, as they look to continue locking down the opposition.
Wheeling will be looking to lock down Wesleyan offensively as they come off a big six-to-zero win over Salem and they have all the goal-scoring you would want on a soccer team starting with Sinasi Emre Deniz who leads them with nine goals on the season as well as Casey Bunker, Erik Rostoen, Max Evans who are all tied for second on the team with three goals. They also have solid goaltending with Bryant Sheffield who comes into Wednesday's game with a 1.41 GAA and a 0.744 SV%.
Kick-off for Wednesday evening's game is scheduled for 7:30 PM at Bishop Schmitt Field. You can watch the game live by clicking HERE or follow along with Live Stats by clicking HERE.
