IRVINE, Calif. — Buba Fofanah and Owen Beninga were both key to the UC Santa Barbara Men's Soccer team's perfect start to conference play last week, and now they have both collected awards as the fruit of their labors. The Big West announced Fofanah as their Men's Soccer Offensive Player of the Week and Beninga as their Freshman of the Week on Monday. It is a first weekly award for Fofanah, while for Beninga it is a second consecutive Freshman of the Week nod from the conference.
 
Fofanah scored the game-winning goal in each of the Gauchos' matches, as the offense broke out of its slump and Santa Barbara ended a six-match winless streak. On Wednesday night at Cal State Fullerton, Fofanah's 27^th-minute goal was the only score of the game, giving the Gauchos a 1-0 victory. On Saturday against UC Riverside, the grad student took less than five minutes to find the back of the net again, putting home what would prove to be the decisive goal. But he was not done, starting the move which resulted in Santa Barbara's second goal of the evening as the Gauchos went up by two in less than 15 minutes en route to a comfortable 3-0 victory. Fofanah is now one of only two Big West players with two game-winning goals on the season, and he ranks second in the conference for both total goals (4) and total points (9).
 
While Fofanah was responsible for most of the numbers the Gauchos put up on their side of the scoreboard last week, Beninga kept right on anchoring a defense that prevented their opponents from putting up any. Making collegiate starts number three and four, the rookie goalkeeper maintained his perfect record with two more shutouts, vaulting up into a tie for second place on The Big West clean sheet leaderboard. He made four saves against the Titans on Wednesday night, adding another commanding performance in the air to make sure nothing came of Fullerton's five second-half corner kicks. He needed to make only two saves to shut out UC Riverside on Saturday, though one of them was a stunner at full stretch to keep a shot from finding the top corner.
 
Fofanah, Beninga and the Gauchos enter the second week of conference play atop the table with two wins from two games. They will head north for a rematch of last year's conference championship against UC Davis in Davis on Wednesday night, then host Cal State Bakersfield at Harder Stadium on Saturday night.