Tidbits from around the country, teed up just for you every Thursday.

Three conference tournaments start this week, with 16 more (sixteen...more) kicking off between now and Friday the 13th. For more, check out our always-evolving Conference Tournament Hub.

Photo Courtesy of Akron

We'll start with The Akron Watch this time around, after the Zips barely escaped a surging Michigan State team with a 2-1 win on Wednesday night. Despite Teal Bunbury's 15th goal of the season less than four minutes into the game, Akron couldn't score again until the 75th minute, when Blair Gavin sunk a penalty kick. But the Spartans, who have been scorching lately, put up one of the best fights the Zips have seen this year, tallying the first first-half goal Akron's allowed all season in this one. Said Akron coach Caleb Porter: "'We haven't been through much adversity and I think you can tell a lot about a championship-level team in the moments of adversity." Another dominating fun fact about Akron this year: the Zips have outscored their Big Ten opponents, 14-2 on the season.

A week after being profiled by NCAA.com, Monmouth set an all-time program record for wins with a 2-0 win over former NEC leaders Quinnipiac on Sunday. With a 15-1-1 record on the season, the Hawks broke the record of 14 wins set by the 2006 team. The win came after another victory on Friday, over CCSU, which followed Monmouths' first loss of the season two Sundays ago -- a loss that some expected to jolt the Hawks. But, a record-setting season for Monmouth looks very much back on the right track.

Michigan earned its 100th all-time win as a varsity program with a 2-1, double-overtime win over No. 12 Northwestern on Sunday. The Wolverines now close up their regular season with a game in Columbus against an Ohio State team that just took down Indiana, playing live on the Big Ten Network.

After tallying North Carolina's first hat trick in four years, the Tar Heels' Alex Dixon was named to the College Soccer News and Top Drawer Soccer Teams of the Week. It's impressive enough to notch a hat trick, especially for a power like North Carolina; it's a whole other thing to do it like Dixon did, with all three goals coming in a seven-minute stretch. Going into the Tar Heels' final two regular season games this week, it'll be interesting to see if the sophomore can keep it going. 

Connecticut, a team that fell out of the top-25 after opening at 2-2-2, clinched the Big East Blue Division title with a 3-0 win over Marquette on Monday. The win gave the Huskies their 18th Big East title in 27 years in the league, along with a first-round bye in the conference tournament -- they'll open with a quarterfinal match against Providence in Storrs on Nov. 7.

UMBC's all-everything duo of Andrew Bulls and Levi Houapeu, the No. 1 and No. 2 scorers in the nation in terms of points-per-game, were named the America East Striker and Midfielder of the Year, respectively. The Retrievers, who have trailed off ever since reaching the top-25 midway through the year, scratched out a No. 5 seed in the America East Tournament, where they'll play at Binghamton in a quarterfinal match on Saturday.

With a 1-0 win over Navy on Tuesday night, Maryland snapped a two-game scoreless drought. After being shut out in a loss to Wake Forest and a tie with Virginia, the Terps got back to their winning ways with a 10th-minute goal from Kaoru Forbess. Maryland closes up its regular season on Friday with a 7:30 p.m. match against The College of Charleston at Ludwig Field.

Tidbits from around the country, teed up just for you every Thursday.

For virtually every conference with a postseason tournament, only two weekends remain in the regular season. For the always-packed BIG EAST, this weekend's the final one before tourney play begins on Wednesday. Keep an eye on action this weekend, especially in the Red Division, where nobody's secured a postseason berth yet, with five teams within seven points of each other.

Akron's Teal Bunbury scored two more goals on Wednesday night, as the top-ranked Zips rolled over Penn State, 3-0. The sophomore has now scored a goal in nine of his last 11 games and has put up four multi-goal games this year. Akron is very, very good. And in the second installment of the Akron Watch, the Zips' defense has allowed just three goals in 1,440:00 of play for a team goals-against-average of 0.19, which out-paces Evansville's NCAA single-season record of 0.24, set in 1990. Also, because we missed it earlier in the week, Darlington Nagbe was named MAC Player of the Week after notching a seven-point day against Michigan last week.

In another Story We Wish We Wrote, Santa Barbara News-Press senior writer Mark Patton takes a look at two stories of perseverance on the fourth-ranked Gauchos, where Waid Ibrahim is playing with a pacemaker that revived his soccer career and David Walker just got the rods removed from his broken wrist. Neither of the forwards, Patton writes, has missed a game this year.

Photo Courtesy of Ohio State

In another Photo Gallery Of Current Varsity Soccer Players In Their Childhood Halloween Costumes And Telling Traumatizing Childhood Stories, Ohio State ran a feature this week called 'Trick-or-Treating with Ohio State Men's Soccer.' The first story? From senior defender Doug Verhoff: "My dad use to always take the chain off his chain saw and then run the chain saw across his chest.  Everyone would always freak out. He's a wild one so I'm sure this does not surprise many people."

UMBC once again features the No. 1 and 2 scorers in the country, after Levi Houapeu was named America East Player of the Week following his second hat trick of the year. The goals came as the Retrievers clinched a spot in the America East Tournament with a win over Albany on Saturday. Houapeu sits just below teammate Andrew Bulls and his 2.67 goals per game with a ledger of 2.60 a contest. UMBC, who's gone through a few rough patches this year after starting the season undefeated at 9-0-0 (the Retrievers are only 3-4-0 since then, with all but one of those games conference clashes) can finish no lower than fifth in the conference.

Michigan State, which had taken a mid-season tumble, downed Notre Dame on Wednesday for the Spartans' fourth straight win. The Spartans' notched their 10th win of the year, given them 10 wins for the ninth time this decade, while Cyrus Sadee scored the game-winner for the second straight MSU game.

Louisville tied the school record for wins on Wednesday, downing Cincinnati to improve to 12-2-2. The Big East Red Division leaders wrap up the regular season at Villanova on Saturday, Oct. 31 at 1:00 p.m.

The weekend finished without the hordes of top-25 teams falling like they had in weeks past, but it definitely didn't go off without a hitch, as a number of teams either took tough in-conference losses or had to settle for ties with league rivals.

Photo Courtesy of Jeremy Hartigan, Cornell Athletics

First, Cornell put up a massive effort to tie a Harvard team that looked to be running away with the Ivy League, tying the eighth-ranked Crimson at home on Saturday to keep the Big Red undefeated in-conference after a year that saw them win only one game total and score only four goals in Ivy League Play. Read about Cornell's near-miraculous transformation here.

Up five spots on the charts, South Florida ran into a St. John's team that's run into tough times this year -- falling from a top perch that once had the Red Storm at No. 1 and plummeting all the way out of the rankings -- and came out with a 1-1 tie in Tampa. Maybe we should have all seen this one coming, with the series coming down to four one-goal games out of the last five contests before Saturday night. But whatever the case, the tie kept South Florida from picking up a full set of points on the weekend, while Louisville just kept on charging in the Big East.

Taking America East losses on Saturday were BU and UMBC, two teams that sizzled early and have since started to stumble. For the Terriers, the loss to Hartford was their second straight, and keeps them winless in-conference in addition to their precarious state in the top-25. Down in Baltimore, the Retrievers cracked the top-25 two weeks ago on the strength of a 9-0-0 start. They too, have lost two in a row, falling to Vermont last week before taking their first home loss of the year against UNH on Friday.

Sunday was a bit less eventful, although it did feature a tie in the top-5, with San Diego State -- a team that took down UCSB a few weeks ago -- drawing with No. 4 UCLA, although Kyle Nakazawa's scoring streak jumped up to seven straight games. Charlotte, on a weekend when the 49ers blew out George Washington, 6-0, on Friday, came back with a tie with Richmond. Meanwhile, Big Ten wrench-in-the-works Penn State kept making things difficult, tying Northwestern, 1-1, while Washington -- another team that's playing great, after downing Cal on Friday night -- tied No. 22 Stanford.

Saturday
No. 1 Akron def. Western Michigan, 4-0
No. 3 South Florida tied St. John's (N.Y.), 1-1 (OT)
No. 7 UCSB def. UC Riverside, 1-0
No. 8 Harvard tied Cornell, 1-1
No. 12 Louisville def. Syracuse, 4-0
No. 14 Indiana def. Michigan, 1-0
No. 16 Boston U lost to Hartford, 3-1
No. 19 Brown def. Princeton, 4-2
No. 20 Old Dominion lost to Towson, 2-1
No. 22 Drake def. Evansville, 2-1
No. 24 Dartmouth def. Yale, 2-1 (OT)
No. 25 UMBC lost to New Hampshire, 2-0

Sunday, Oct. 11
No. 4 UCLA tied San Diego State, 2-2
No. 10 Monmouth def. Long Island, 2-0
Richmond tied No. 15 Charlotte, 0-0
No. 17 Portland def. Loyola Marymount, 3-1
No. 21 Northwestern tied. Penn State, 1-1
No. 22 Stanford tied Washington, 1-1

North Carolina takes on Wake Forest on Friday Photo Courtesy of Jeffrey Camarati, North Carolina

This time last year, Wake Forest had sawed down 11 straight opponents, slicing through defenses and trampling offense to an unblemished 11-0 mark to open the year - with only two of those wins coming by fewer than two goals. Before falling in the national semifinals, few teams in the history of D-I Men's Soccer had ever dominated like Wake had.

Snap to 2009 and see a No. 6 Wake Forest team grind out to a 7-2-1 start, including losses to ACC rival Virginia and upstart Charlotte, the latter of which came on Sept. 26. But also see a team that started the season young, very young, and without bearing much of any resemblance to last year. Also see a team that had to go without arguably its best player, in defender Ike Opara, for the last three weeks, with Opara playing in the U-20 World Cup.

And see, most of all, a team that's managed to fight stay afloat, heading into a crucial matchup with in-state and ACC rival North Carolina at Spry Stadium on Friday night. On alumni weekend - the 1989 ACC champ Demon Deacons team will be honored at halftime - Wake Forest plays its biggest game of the year.

They've learned to battle - hard - to earn wins, and that'll come in handy on Friday night in a clash of two teams in the top half of D-I Soccer's premier conference. UNC, with nine points in the league, leads the way, with Wake Forest's six giving the Deacons the third spot.

Zack Schilawski leads the way offensively for Wake Forest with five goals, including four in his last two games - both Wake blowouts: 5-1 over Virginia Tech and 3-0 over UNC Greensboro. Schilawski's 13 points are joined at the top of the offensive charts by Austin da Luz's six assists and two goals for 10 total points.

For UNC, the nation's 22nd-ranked offense at 2.11 goals per game, Michael Farfan and Billy Schuler come into the game with 10 points each, both on four goals and two assists.
The game also features two of the nation's top goalies, in Wake's Akira Fitzgerald (0.82 GAA, .833 save percentage) and North Carolina's Brooks Haggerty (0.48 GAA, .838 save percentage).
 

Two teams that share a town border came into the season with far, far different expectations. N.C. State looked like a team that might make a run at the ACC title, with a cloud of question marks hanging over much of the rest of the conference. For Duke, the Blue Devils amounted to largely an afterthought.

Then the season started. The Blue Devils started rolling out upsets - first over Virginia, and most recently over then-No. 2 Maryland last Friday - and bounded into the top-10. Down the road in Raleigh, the Wolfpack haven't struggled, certainly, but they've been without The Big Win. Of the three ticks outside the win column this year, two of them have come to teams ranked in the top-10 - a 2-1 loss to North Carolina on Sept. 12 and a 1-1 tie with Maryland a week later.

On Friday night, N.C. State, the owner of a three-game win streak, gets that chance. Last year, the Wolfpack pulled off an upset over then-No. 18 Duke in Durham, and this time around, against a Duke team that fell earlier this week to unranked but streaking Davidson, look for the 'pack to look to win  prove that they should be counted among the league and nation's elite.

But they'll have to do it against a team that's given up just three goals in 551 minutes of action at home. Discounting the four-goal downpour from Davidson, the Blue Devils had allowed just seven goals in nine games.

For Duke, Cole Grossman paces the offense, with 13 points on four goals and five assists. On the other side, N.C. State's duo of Ronnie Bouemboue (who scored both goals in the Wolfpack's upset of Duke on the road last year) and Alan Sanchez lead the way for the men in red, putting up five goals and 15 total points, and six assists and 12 points, respectively.


New Hampshire @ No. 25 UMBC - Saturday, 1 p.m. - Live Stats
New Hampshire's coming off a 2-1 comeback win over No. 16 Boston U on Wednesday, while UMBC is trying to win its second straight after a loss at Vermont last weekend ended its season-opening, nine-game win streak, but more recently after the Retrievers recovered with a 2-0 win over Stony Brook on Wednesday. UNH is a good squad, but UMBC has been nasty at home. If this game were in Durham -- UMBC's had a tough time on the road in-conference over the past year -- the scales might tip toward the Wildcats. But as-is, watch one of the nation's best offenses, in UMBC, get to work against an upstart UNH club.

St. John's (N.Y.) @ No. 3 South Florida - Saturday, 7:30 p.m.
The Bulls took their second loss in-conference this week, falling to No. 12 Louisville, 1-0. Expect them to look to rebound. Hard. Now sitting at just 3-2-1 in the BIG EAST, they'll be taking on a team that was once ranked as high as No. 1 in some polls earlier in the season.

Cornell @ No. 8 Harvard - Saturday, 7 p.m. - Live Stats
This game looks lopsided from the start, with Harvard possessing one of the nation's best offenses and a record that features just one loss - to No. 6 Wake Forest. But Cornell's resurgence this year - featured this week on NCAA.com - has been dramatic, and expect a battle up in Ithaca in front of the Big Red alumni.

No. 21 Northwestern @ Penn State - Sunday, 1 p.m. - Live Stats | Watch
Few teams are playing better soccer right now than Northwestern, who opened Big Ten play last Sunday with a win over then-No. 15 Ohio State, and who's now riding a three-game win streak. But on Sunday, the Wildcats will hit a team that's gotten just as hot as they have, meeting a Penn State team that's gotten better as the season's progressed, getting the most recent victory of a three-game win streak over defending conference champ Michigan State last Sunday. It'll be physical and it'll be fast...but what else is a Big Ten game like?

No. 4 UCLA @ San Diego State - Sunday, 5 p.m. - Live Stats
There are a ton of reasons to watch UCLA play (or follow along at the Live Stats link) right now. Can the Bruins' Kyle Nakazawa boost his six-game scoring streak that's seen him account for seven and assist on two more of UCLA's last 10 goals? Can the Bruins add another to their six-game win streak? Or, can the Aztecs get back to the winning form that saw them go unbeaten through six games -- including a 4-2 win over then-No. 6 UCSB -- before a loss to Oregon State on Sunday? We can find out the answers to this questions on Sunday. Together.

Two Fridays ago, Maryland looked to be ready to set the pace in the ACC, with the then-No. 4 Terps dropping No. 2 North Carolina, 1-0. Today, the Terps find themselves out of the top-10, coming in at No. 11 as the recipients of two tough losses last week -- the first to unranked George Mason on Tuesday, then another to No. 14 Duke on Friday night.

But, after a poll last week that looked like a tornado hit it, this week's looks relatively tame. Only two teams exited the top-25, with two more -- Drake and previously ranked Dartmouth -- taking their spots at No. 22 and 24, respectively. Two more left the top-10, with Indiana also falling after a 3-0 loss at UCSB on Friday night. In their places climb those Gauchos (up to No. 7 after taking No. 11 last week) and Duke, with the not-so-surprising-anymore Blue Devils firing five spots up to No. 9.

Photo Courtesy of Duke

Meanwhile, Akron maintained its hold on the top spot, despite scoring only six goals and posting two shutouts in two wins last week against Ohio State and Florida Atlantic. In doing so, Michael Nanchoff, who -- along with his legendary Akron family -- was profiled by NCAA.com last week, earned a spot on his third straight Team of the Week, this time on the College Soccer News squad, after two straight weeks on the Soccer America team. The Zips earned a total of 575 points, including all 23 first-place votes.

Just below the Zips sits North Carolina, who rose up from No. 5 after a huge ACC win over Virginia, which the Tar Heels took, 1-0 in OT. South Florida's in third now, up from No. 6 last week, thanks to a shutout win over Cincinnati.

UCLA stood firm in the No. 4 spot, after a weekend that saw the Bruins go 1-0-1, downing Oregon State and tying Washington. The win marked Kyle Nakazawa's sixth straight game with a goal and pushed UCLA's unbeaten streak to six games.

Into the fifth spot slides Pac-10 rival Cal, whose conference win over then-No. 20 (and now No. 23) Stanford moved the Golden Bears up one spot in the polls.

A 5-1 win over Virginia Tech couldn't offset Wake Forest's loss earlier in the week to Charlotte, as the Demon Deacons fell to No. 6 after standing at No. 3 last week. For Charlotte, who snapped Wake Forest's nation-leading non-conference win streak and tacked on a win over Furman on Saturday, the 49ers made the biggest jump up, now finding themselves at No. 15, up seven spots from No. 22.

Rounding out the top-10 are No. 8 Harvard and No. 10 Monmouth, who both hung onto their spots from a week prior with wins over Yale and Fairleigh Dickinson, respectively.

In the second stratus, the big risers included N.C. State (up six spots to No. 18), Portland (up four to No. 17) and Northwestern (who dropped Ohio State in its Big Ten opener to shoot up to No. 21).

UMBC led teams taking the biggest hits, as the Retrievers plummeted seven spots to No. 25 after taking its first loss of the year in its first game in America East play, falling 3-1 at Vermont. Higher up the poll, but falling five spots, was Indiana, whose loss in Santa Barbara trumped a 3-0 win over then-No. 20 Kentucky earlier in the week.

Photo courtesy of Vermont Athletics

UMBC was picked to finish dead last in the America East Conference in the coaches' preseason poll. Now, the owners of the nation's third-best offense are 9-1-0 and out to prove that this team composed of mainly freshmen and sophomores can play with anybody -- and win its first-ever America East championship.

After a weekend that spared only a handful of teams in the top-25 from upsets and saw just five teams in the top-10 emerge without a loss, the NSCAA poll looked understandably...altered on Monday.

Akron, who destroyed Bowling Green, 6-0, hung onto first. Only one other team in the country held its position. Two teams fell out of the top-10, seven dropped out of the top-25 and seven more replaced them - led by now-undefeated Ohio State in the 15th spot.

In the top-10, No. 2 Maryland was rewarded for knocking off then-No. 2 North Carolina with a late goal on Friday night, jumping up two spots, while UNC fell to fifth. UCLA, who took two wins over unranked teams, bounded up from No. 10 to No. 5. Heading back to the ACC, Wake Forest used a win over No. 8  Harvard (still at No. 8) to make its way up to No. 3.

South Florida and Cal fell to No. 6 and No. 7, respectively, after weekend losses, while UCSB's win over UC Irvine on Sunday wasn't enough to offset a loss to San Diego State, as the Gauchos sunk from No. 7 to No. 11. The other team to fall out of the top-10, Louisville, plummeted from No. 9 to No. 17 after a weekend that saw the Cardinals fall, 4-0, to Notre Dame on Friday and tie Marquette, 2-2, on Sunday.

The two top-10 evacuees created room for Indiana to make its way from No. 13 to No. 9 after a win over Wisconsin and for Monmouth to continue its meteoric rise to new heights, surging to No. 10 - the program's highest-ever ranking - after starting the year at 8-0-0.

Other interesting movers & shakers start with the Buckeyes, who downed defending Big Ten champs and No. 21 Michigan State on Sunday to blow out to the program's best-ever start. Look for them to be tested on Wednesday when OSU heads to Akron.

Virginia and Duke didn't suffer too much for losses to Clemson and BC, respectively, falling from No. 11 to No. 12 and No. 12 to No. 14, in that order. But Dartmouth, who fell to Hartwick, and Creighton, who fell to Portland, did, as both the Big Green and Blue Jays dropped from No. 15 and No. 17 to the Others-Receiving-Votes section.

And finally, UMBC cracks the top-25. The owner of two of the nation's top three scorers, in Andrew Bulls (first) and Levi Houapeu (third), the Retrievers are playing great soccer. And oh yeah - they're still undefeated, at 9-0-0.

Tidbits from around the country, teed-up just for you.

• The U.S. Under-20 Men's National team -- featuring eight NCAA players -- opens up the 2009 FIFA U-20 World Cup in Cairo with a match against Germany at 10 a.m. (ET) on Saturday. For the full release from USA Soccer, click here!
  
  
• Michigan State goalkeeper Avery Steinlage's NCAA-record scoreless streak ended last Sunday, when the Spartans took a 2-0 loss against San Diego. The run ended at 1,318:26 minutes, smashing the previous mark of 974:20, set by Milos Kocic of Loyola (MD) last season. For a profile of Steinlage click here, or here for a podcast with the MSU goalie. MSU opens Big 10 play against rival Ohio State on Sunday.
  

  UMBC's Andrew Bulls

  
  
• Two UMBC players sit in the top-3 nationwide in points per game, with
  Andrew Bulls posting seven goals and nine
  assists for 23 total points (at a clip of 3.29 ppg), with Levi Houapeu close behind, with 8-6-22 (3.14 per contest). In the middle? Harvard's All-Everything forward Andre Akpan, at 6-4-16 through five matches (3.20 a game).
  
  
• Boston College has won three straight after starting the season at 1-3, with the Eagles charging over Fairfield, then-No. 14 Boston University and Hartford over the past week. This weekend, BC hosts ACC rival and No. 12 Duke, with the Blue Devils fresh off a win over UNC Wilmington during the week. Duke's surprised a ton of people across the country this year, but don't count BC out yet, as the Eagles seem to be hitting their stride and getting ready to enter the mix in arguably the best conference in D-I Men's Soccer.
  
  
• Marshall ended Kentucky's longest unbeaten streak in school history last Sunday, ending the run at 15 games with the Wildcats' first loss of the year.
  
  
• ESPN Soccernet's Maria Burns-Ortiz profiled USF's Zak Boggs this week, showing the world the tremendously awesome talents of the M.A.C. Hermann Watch Lister, the 4.0 student, the possible Rhodes Scholar, the Eagle Scout, the black belt, the marbles champ and the champion jump-roper. Great stuff.