LAS VEGAS — The UC Santa Barbara Men's Soccer team returns west this week, rounding out their long road trip with a stop in Las Vegas to play UNLV on Thursday before hosting Grand Canyon at Harder Stadium on Sunday. The Gauchos are looking to right the ship after dropping three straight matches to Top 25 teams in Cornell, San Diego and Marshall, while the Rebels have similarly struggled and the Antelopes lost their one and only road match so far this season.
 
LAST TIME OUT
While beating the 2024 College Cup runners-up and then-10^th (now sixth) ranked team in the country in their backyard was always going to be challenging, things could have hardly gone worse for Santa Barbara at Marshall on Sunday. Goalkeeper Luke Skinner made a career-best seven saves, but he also saw a career-worst four goals go past him. Three of those came in the final 20 minutes of the match, after the Gauchos had a player and their head coach both sent off.
 
GAUCHOS TO KNOW
Santa Barbara has plenty of offensive talent, but they are yet to find a formula that consistently turns that immense threat into goals. Buba Fofanah is fast and agile enough to dribble past any defender and strong enough to hold off any who try to pen him in, but he has just one goal on seven shots through six games despite all that dynamism. His typical strike partner, Nicolas Willumsen, is a prototypical big, strong target forward but is yet to get off the mark this season. Zac Siebenlist and Isaiah Barber have both had the most success on the stat sheet so far this year and they made a good partnership on Sunday, pressing the Herd backline energetically despite the 90-plus-degree temperatures. Just behind them, Steinar Bjornsson and Thomas Noordegraaf, a pair of attacking midfielders who came up through European soccer academies, have both played well in their first season at the college level, sitting joint-top of the Gauchos' assist leaderboard with two each.
 
SCOUTING THE REBELS
UNLV has likewise spent the week licking their wounds after a drubbing on the road Sunday, suffering their second 4-0 defeat of the season at Santa Clara (the first came at Washington at the end of August). But before the Gauchos get to licking their lips, it is worth mentioning that both of the Rebels' wins on the season have come on their home turf, over LMU and Cal State Bakersfield, though UC Riverside managed to beat them, 2-0, right before that win over the Roadrunners.

In terms of players to watch, UNLV's names to know are Sawyer Crisostomo, Nick Legendre and Tyler Ware. Crisostomo was a Western Athletic Conference All-Freshman honoree in 2024, while forwards Legendre and Ware have started all six matches together. They have taken 18 shots at goal between them, a team-high 11 of which belong to Legendre, though none of those have found the net. Of Ware's seven shots, the one that did beat the keeper was the game-winner over LMU on opening night.
 
SCOUTING THE LOPES
Like their WAC conference-mate UNLV, Grand Canyon also has a 4-0 against Santa Clara on their resume this season, though it was a win for the Lopes, at home two weeks ago. They are also coming off a loss, suffering a 1-0 defeat at Cal State Fullerton in what was their first road match of the season on Sunday. In fact, GCU comes into Sunday's match winless in their last five away trips, dating back to last October.

For the Gauchos to make it six, they will have to contain freshman Junior Diouf, who already has five goals and two assists on the season. He would lead the team in both of those categories, if not for Preseason All-WAC forward Ben Assane, who has a team-high three assists. The only times that neither Assane nor Diouf were on the scoresheet were the Lopes were GCU's two losses, both shutouts.
 
FOLLOW ALONG
The Gauchos and Rebels will kick off from Peter Johann Soccer Field in Las Vegas at 8 p.m. on Thursday, with the match set to be streamed live online through WAC International. When Santa Barbara returns to Harder Stadium on Sunday, they will kick off at 7 p.m., live on ESPN+.

This weekend is UC Santa Barbara's Welcome Weekend; fans attending Sunday's game are advised to park in Lot 27 or Structure 22, by The Thunderdome and to plan extra time for arriving due to move-in operations. The Gauchos' game against Grand Canyon is the second of a soccer doubleheader, as the UC Santa Barbara Women's Soccer team will host Weber State at 12 noon on Sunday. Tickets for both matches are currently on sale at ucsbgauchos.com/tickets, and UC Santa Barbara students get in free to all Gaucho home games with a valid student ID. Last year, a crowd of nearly 5,000 fans, 3,200 of them UC Santa Barbara students, watched the Gauchos defeat Portland, 3-0.