LOUDONVILLE, NY – Looking to conclude its 2018 regular season slate on a high note, Siena Men's Soccer will host MAAC rival Saint Peter's at the Siena Turf Field on Wednesday, Oct. 31 at 2 PM. The match will be streamed on SienaAllAccess.com and will serve as the team's Senior Day, with the Saints' two members of the Class of 2019 being honored prior to kickoff. A.J. Kanell will serve as the play-by-play announcer for the broadcast.
Today's match can be viewed by logging on to SienaAllAccess.com. Viewers can catch all the action online for $7.95 via their laptops, desktops, and tablets, as well as on iOS (Apple) devices including those that support Adobe Flash 10.1 or greater (Android devices). Special features to the Siena All-Access platform include live stats, and pertinent related twitter and ticker updates. Additionally, all games are archived upon their conclusion and can viewed at any time thereafter through the on-demand feature.
Siena (4-10-3, 2-5) looks to eclipse last year's win total and keep up success on its home field in the affair. The team cruised to a 2-0 shutout win over Canisius last Wednesday, with freshman forward
Birgir Thorsteinsson notching his first-career multi-goal contest. Junior
Cristobal Toledo and senior captain
Adel Cekic each tallied an assist in the victory, with the latter collected his first point of the year. Siena then fell, 5-0, at Rider over the weekend in its final regular season road battle.
With eight points each, the team is led offensively by Thorsteinsson and fellow freshman
Aaron Martin, who has three of goals and a pair assists to his name 17 games into his rookie season. The Madrid, Spain native is the first Siena player to receive MAAC Rookie of the Week honors three times in a season, doing to on Aug. 27, Sept. 3 and Oct. 1. Helping the Green and Gold to rank third in the league in saves (79), goalkeeper
Greg Monroe played in-goal for the entirety of the team's last 15 contests, amounting a 1.87 goals-against-average.
Wednesday's match will serve as the final home contest for seniors Cekic and
Marko Stojanovic, with both receiving recognition beforehand as part of Senior Day activities. A native of Clifton Park, New York, Cekic has seen action in 30 contests in his Siena career, notching assists in each of the past two seasons. A midfielder, Stojanovic has played in 23 contests while donning the Green and Gold, and has earned a place on the MAAC All-Academic Team the past two seasons, landing on the conference's Academic Honor Roll in each of the last three campaigns.
Off to its best performance in eight seasons under head coach Julien Richens, Saint Peter's (8-7-2, 5-3-1) enters the mid-week contest in fifth place in the conference standings, needing a win to clinch its first trip to the postseason since 2015. Winners of four of their last five contests, the Peacocks fell to MAAC leader Fairfield, 1-0, in their own Senior Day competition in New Jersey last Saturday. The squad, which advanced to the Second Round of the NCAA Tournament under then-coach
Cesar Markovic in 2003, rank second in the MAAC points (79), goals (27) and assists (25). For the first time since 2013, the Peacocks have seen three different players honored by the conference, with goalkeeper Jason Dubrovich winning Defensive Player and Rookie of the Week on Oct. 22, junior Frederik Linqvist earning Offensive Player of the Week on Sept. 24 and sophomore Marco Torini garnering Office Player of the Week on Sept. 17.
Meeting annually since Siena joined the MAAC in 1990, the Saints hold a 14-12-3 advantage in the all-time series. Saint Peter's took the head-to-head matchup in 2017 by a score of 3-1, with sophomore Jordan Jowers scoring for the Peacocks, and Toledo notching his first collegiate goal in the loss for Siena. The matchup hold history for Saints' Head Coach Markovic, who coached at Saint Peter's from 2000-03. Markovic holds a 2-2-1 mark against his former squad while leading Siena.
