Sunday, Nov. 24 at 1 p.m

UC Santa Barbara at Saint Mary's

 

St. Mary's (16-1-0, 7-0-0 West Coast, 8-1-0 home)

All-time record vs. the Gaels (W-L-T): 7-5-1

Record vs. the Gaels in the NCAA Tournament: First meeting

Gaels' record in NCAA Tournament: 4-2-1

Gaels' record in NCAA Tournament Second Round: 2-0-0

Last meeting: Sept. 19, 2019: at St. Mary's 1, UCSB 0 (2OT)

 

 

St. Mary's will offer a live video broadcast of the NCAA Tournament second round matchup on Sunday afternoon through Watch Stadium. A link to the broadcast can be found above or on the men's soccer schedule page.

 

UCSBGauchos.com will offer an audio-only broadcast of Sunday's game. Sports Information Director Arthur Wilkie will handle the play-by-play, while current Gaucho student-athlete Carson Vom Steeg will deliver color commentary. The pregame show will go live at 12:45 p.m. The broadcast can also be found above or on the men's soccer schedule page.

 

Follow the @UCSBMensSoccer account on Twitter for highlights and more from Sunday's match.

 

For the first time since 2015, UCSB has qualified for the NCAA Tournament following a highly successful season. Despite numerous injuries and international call-ups to several key members of the squad, head coach Tim Vom Steeg managed to lead his team to an 11-3-4 regular season finish and a top 25 RPI. That was good for second in the Big West, which afforded the Gauchos a bye into the semifinal of the conference tournament, and a win over CSUN in that match vaulted UCSB into the Big West Tournament final. Despite a loss away to UC Davis in the title match, the Gauchos still found themselves in a comfortable position RPI-wise and landed in their 13th NCAA Tournament on Selection Monday.

 

Following Thursday night's win against Cal, the Gauchos are 6-0 in the NCAA Tournament first round.

 

UCSB's national championship in 2006 began with a first round victory against San Diego State in Santa Barbara.

 

After Thursday, the Gauchos are 19-10-2 all-time in the NCAA Tournament, sporting a 13-2-0 home record.

 

The Gauchos have a 4-4-2 overtime record in the NCAA Tournament.

 

Santa Barbara has seen its games go to penalty kicks twice: first in the 2004 College Cup final vs Indiana (the Hoosiers won 3-2 on penalties), and then in the 2006 College Cup semifinal vs Wake Forest (the Gauchos won 4-3 on penalties).

 

UCSB has a 7-5 record in NCAA Tournament second round matches, though it has a 2-3 record on the road in those games.

 

The Gauchos are 2-0 against West Coast conference opponents in the NCAA Tournament, with both wins coming against San Diego (2002 First Round, 2009 Second Round).

 

UCSB booked its spot in the second round in style with a 3-1 win over Cal on Thursday night, the Gauchos' first win over the Golden Bears since 2003. The Gauchos took the lead in the first half with Rodney Michael's 18th minute strike, but Cal's Christian Gomez hit back with a 39th minute goal off of a corner kick. The Gauchos were in control of the game, however, and they grabbed another goal to show for it in the 65th minute after Michael earned a penalty and Candia converted it. Will Baynham added the third and final goal, finishing a Noah Billingsley assist.  

 

Another highly successful season for Saint Mary's nets them their fourth NCAA Tournament bid in program history, coming into the competition as the 12th-seeded team in the country. The Gaels have lost just once in the past two seasons, compiling an impressive 34-1-2 mark. Its only loss came to UC Davis at home, in which the Aggies came away with the 4-2 win. Leading goalscorer Anders Engebretsen has 16 goals on the season, good for fifth in the country. Sunday's match will be a rematch of UCSB's 1-0 double-overtime loss in Moraga last season.

 

The Gauchos are in the Wake Forest region of the bracket in the lower left side. On the other side of UCSB's immediate portion of the bracket, No. 5 seed Indiana faces Kentucky at 9 a.m. on Sunday. Whomever emerges from the second round will meet in the third round on either Nov. 30 or Dec. 1. After that, the quarterfinals take place on Dec. 6 or 7, and then the College Cup will be on Dec. 13 and 15 at WakeMed Soccer Park in Cary, N.C.

 

Senior wingback Noah Billingsley earned the Big West Conference's Defensive Player of the Year designation, senior attacking midfielder Thibault Candia earned Co-Midfielder of the Year honors, while Finn Ballard McBride received the Freshman Player of the Year award in the league's end-of-year awards announced Nov. 12. The full list of Gaucho honorees is as follows:

 

First Team - Rodney Michael (third selection), Noah Billingsley (second selection), Hunter Ashworth (second selection), Sahid Conteh, Thibault Candia

Second Team - Finn Ballard McBride, Ben Roach

Honorable Mention - Will Baynham

All-Freshman Team - Finn Ballard McBride

 

The Gauchos' eight selections across the four teams are the most since 2016 (nine).

 

Senior right wingback Noah Billingsley and junior centerback Hunter Ashworth were successful in representing New Zealand U-23 at the Oceania Football Confederation U-23 Championship in Fiji, winning the tournament after defeating Solomon Islands 5-0 in the final. The Kiwi duo helped their home country qualify for its first Olympics since 2012 at the tournament. In the "Oly-Whites'" final match of the group stage, Billingsley started and scored in New Zealand's comeback 4-2 win against the Solomon Islands.

 

Following the Gauchos' 3-3 draw with No. 1 Stanford, UCSB started to get attention in the national polls. On Sept. 30 and Oct. 1, Santa Barbara were ranked or receiving votes in all four polls for the first time since 2016, ranked as high as No. 18 in the Top Drawer Soccer poll. Now in the rankings for their eighth-straight week, the Gauchos remain fully ranked in all four polls. United Soccer Coaches, Top Drawer Soccer, and College Soccer News all have UCSB at the No. 22 team in the country, while Soccer America place them at No. 21.

 

On Oct. 21, Rodney Michael was selected to the Top Drawer Soccer Midseason Top 100 and Finn Ballard McBride made it on the publication's Freshman Midseason Top 100 list. Michael clocks in at no. 9 on the list, improving on his No. 67 ranking on the preseason chart. After being held scoreless in the first six games of the year, the Freetown, Sierra Leone-native turned his season around with a goal or assist in eight consecutive matches, racking up four goals and six assists in that span. Ballard McBride is on the freshman top 100 list as the no. 6-ranked first-year player in the country. Despite not playing a single minute in any of UCSB's first three matches of the season, the Australian's performances have vaulted him to the top of the Gaucho goalscoring ranks, as he leads the squad with eight goals. He scored in six of the Gauchos' seven matches between the away game at Pacific on Sept. 25 and UCSB's home win against UC Riverside on Oct. 16.

 

The plaudits continue to pour in for Ben Roach as his stellar performances in net have continued for the Gauchos. He earned recognition as an All-Big West second teamer thanks to a year that included a season and career-high 10 saves at Cal Poly on Nov. 2, a nine-save performance at UC Davis, and 10 shutouts so far this season, the most for the Gauchos since 2010. The sophomore has started every game for the Gauchos this year.

 

In the match against UMBC on Sept. 22, Thibault Candia scored the Gauchos' first hat trick since Luis Silva did the same on September 23, 2011 against San Diego. The first goal came early in the first half when Will Baynham played the ball forward for Candia in midfield, where he dribbled the ball into the left side of the 18-yard box, where his attempted cross into the middle took an immediate deflection off the foot of an opposing player and into the net. In the second half, he put away a penalty into the top left corner and brilliantly dribbled the ball from just past midfield to a few yards behind the top of the box, where he got a shot off with his right foot. For his efforts, he was awarded the Big West Co-Offensive Player of the Week award.

 

Noah Billingsley became the first player in the Big West this season to record three assists in a game after assisting the second, third, and fourth goals in UCSB's 5-0 win at No. 22 Cal State Fullerton on Oct. 12. It was Santa Barbara's first triple-assist performance since Memo Arzate completed the feat in 2003 in his 18-assist campaign.