Bowling Green State University Athletics
Saturday, August 24
Bowling Green, OH
7:00 PM
Bowling Green State University
vs
Cincinnati (exhibition)
Falcons Host Cincinnati Saturday Night
August 21, 2013 | Men's Soccer
BGSU battles Bearcats in 7:00 p.m. match
BGSU WEEKLY RELEASE - PDF | Cincinnati Web Site
FREE ADMISSION TO HOME FALCON FUTBOL
Admission for all Falcon men's and women's soccer home matches again this season is free. For those who can't make it to Cochrane Field, live stats are scheduled to be available for each home game via BGSUFalcons.com.
PRESEASON ALL-MAC MADNESS
No fewer than eight Falcons were named to the College Sports Madness Preseason All-MAC Team. The web site announced its preseason all-conference team on Monday (Aug. 19). Seniors Anthony Grant, Sean Sikich and Michael Wiest, junior Danny Baraldi and sophomore Ryan James all were named to the Preseason All-MAC First Team by College Sports Madness, while seniors Zach Schewee and Brandon Silva and sophomore Jake Genrich each earned second-team honors. BG's five first-team selections tied for the most among MAC schools, while the Falcons' total of eight overall players honored was the highest of any school.
ABOUT THE FALCONS
Head coach Eric Nichols and his staff – assistant coaches Charlie Edwards, Greg Hennelly and Zach Lemke – return a total of 13 letterwinners, including nine starters, from last year's club. The 2012 Falcons finished with an overall record of 8-9-3 and a MAC mark of 3-3-1. BGSU tied for fourth in the league regular-season standings last fall, and qualified for the MAC Tournament.
The 2012 club posted the program's highest win total in nearly a decade, since the 2003 season. BGSU went 5-4-1 at home, 3-4-2 on the road and 0-1-0 in neutral-site matches last fall.
The list of returning letterwinners includes nine starters. Two of those starters, senior Anthony Grant and junior Danny Baraldi, earned All-MAC First-Team honors last year, giving BG a pair of all-league first-team honorees for the first time since 2005. Additionally, Grant shared the league's Newcomer of the Year Award.
Grant and Baraldi ranked 1-2 on the team in scoring. Grant had 20 points in his first year with the Brown and Orange, including a BG-high eight goals along with four assists. Baraldi scored 19 points on six goals and a team-leading seven assists. Grant led the MAC with five game-winning goals, and he scored the winner in all three of the team's conference victories. His GWG total was the highest by a BG player since Bobby Biggs scored six winners in the 1997 season.
Baraldi had two GWG last season. Both players have scored at a point-per-match pace in their BG careers to date. Baraldi has 37 career points in 37 games at BG, with 11 goals and 15 assists as a Falcon. Grant had his 20 points in 20 matches in his initial season with the Brown and Orange.
Four of the Falcons' top-five scorers from last season return. In fact, the returning players combined to score 22 of BGSU's 23 goals and register 22 of the team's 27 assists during 2012. Sophomore Ryan James had 10 points last year, good for third on the team, with four goals and two assists. Senior Ryan Comiskey had five points last fall, while classmates Ryan Snashall had four and Zach Schewee and Brandon Silva three apiece.
In goal, senior Michael Wiest played all 1874-plus minutes, and had 100 saves, a goals-against average of 1.10, seven shutouts and a save percentage of .813. Wiest's total of seven shutouts was the highest by a BGSU 'keeper since Dave DeGraff had seven clean sheets in the 2001 season. No Falcon has had more shutouts in a season since Scott Vallow had 10 in 1998.
In front of Wiest, senior Sean Sikich played every second of every match at a center-back position during his junior campaign. Silva played 1866 of the roughly 1874 minutes last fall, with sophomore Jake Genrich on the pitch for 1822 minutes as a freshman. Genrich, Sikich, Silva and Wiest each started all 20 matches for the Falcons last season.
Baraldi made 19 starts and Grant 18 last year, while Schewee was in the starting lineup 16 times and James and Snashall 13 apiece. In addition to the aforementioned players, the returning letterwinners include senior Matt Griesinger and juniors Jon Kumher and Vlad Lekarev. All three players started at least twice, with Kumher making 10 starts on the season, and each of the three played in 13 or more matches.
Additionally, fifth-year senior Joey D'Agostino returns to the acrive roster in 2013. D'Agostino started the first two matches last fall before suffering an injury and missing the remainder of the season.
Silva has started 55 matches in his BGSU career to date, while Schewee has made 52 starts. Baraldi (37), Wiest (33) and D'Agostino (31) each have started over 30 matches in their respective careers, while Snashall, Sikich and Griesinger all have made over 20 starts at BG. The returning players have combined to make a total of 362 starts in their BGSU careers to date.
This year's edition of the Falcons played an international friendly against the Dixie Soccer Club of Mississauga, Ontario, on Sunday (Aug. 17), winning by a 7-0 score at Cochrane Field.
HEAD COACH ERIC NICHOLS
Eric Nichols embarks upon his fifth season with the Falcons. He was named the fifth coach in BGSU men's soccer history on Feb. 17, 2009. In his first four seasons with the Falcons, Nichols has changed the culture of the program, showing steady improvement each season.
Nichols has an overall record of 24-38-12 in his first four years at BG. The Falcons had an RPI of 184 in the 2008 season, the year before Nichols arrived. In 2012, BGSU finished with an RPI of 99. The '12 campaign saw the Falcons post eight wins against a tough schedule. BGSU's 8-9-3 overall mark represented the team's most wins and highest winning percentage since 2003.
Nichols came to Bowling Green after spending the 2008 season as assistant coach at Davidson College. Prior to his stint at Davidson, Nichols was the head men's soccer coach at Ohio Dominican for four seasons (2004-07). Under his guidance, the Panthers recorded a 59-22-1 (.728) overall mark, including a final ranking of fourth in 2007. That team advanced to the quarterfinals of the NAIA National Tournament.
Nichols also has coaching experience as an assistant at Ohio Wesleyan and as head coach of the Columbus Crew's U18 U.S. Soccer Academy team.
Additional biographical information on Nichols, along with the rest of the Falcons, can be found on the web here at BGSUFalcons.com.
BUILD FROM THE BACK
Slowly but surely, the Falcons have improved defensively during the Eric Nichols Era. BGSU has moved up the national rankings in goals-against average, saves percentage and – not surprisingly – winning percentage in each of Nichols' first four years at the helm. Last season, goalkeeper Michael Wiest and the BGSU defense ranked 29th in the nation in saves pct., 57th in the country in shutout pct. and 83rd in the country in GAA. To follow are a few more statistics that illustrate BG's defensive improvement over the last few seasons...
DOING IT WITH DEFENSE – BGSU TOTALS/RANKINGS FROM 2008-12
| Category | 2008 | 2009 | 2010 | 2011 | 2012 |
| Team GAA * | 173rd | 192nd | 134th | 109th | 83rd |
| Shutout pct. * | 174th | 153rd | 66th | 44th | 57th |
| Save pct. * | 142nd | 162nd | 122nd | 100th | 29th |
| Winning pct. * | 176th | 179th | 133rd | 120th | 106th |
| Shutouts | 2 | 3 | 6 | 7 | 7 |
| Goals allowed | 37 | 44 | 26 | 24 | 23 |
| Matches allowing 2 or more goals | 14 | 13 | 8 | 7 | 9 |
| Matches allowing 3 or more goals | 5 | 9 | 2 | 4 | 1 |
| Multiple-Goal losses | 9 | 8 | 6 | 3 | 5 |
* NCAA rankings; all other categories are BGSU's season totals
A LOOK AT THE BEARCATS
Head coach Hylton Dayes and the Cincinnati Bearcats finished with a 6-9-4 overall record and a 3-3-2 Big East mark last year. Among the team's top returnees as UC enters the American Athletic Conference are sophomore defender Richardo Israel and senior goalkeeper Taylor Hafling. Israel was named to the Preseason All-AAC Team. Hafling played every minute in net last season, and had a 1.09 GAA and a .788 saves percentage. UC struggled offensively in 2012, with a total of 12 goals in 19 matches. The returning players scored just one of those 12 goals. The Bearcats dropped a 2-0 decision to visiting Michigan on Monday (Aug. 19) in the team's first friendly of the fall.
THE 2013 CAPTAINS
Seniors Joey D'Agostino, Brandon Silva and Michael Wiest are the tri-captains of the 2013 Falcons. Silva, a fifth-year senior, is a team captain for the third consecutive year, while D'Agostino, also in his fifth year, has been named a captain for the second-straight season.
UP NEXT FOR THE FALCONS
Following the Cincinnati scrimmage, the Falcons will have nearly a week to prepare for the regular-season opener. BGSU will begin the season with a pair of home matches over Labor Day weekend, taking on Malone University on Friday, Aug. 30, before welcoming the University of Michigan to town on Monday, Sept. 2. Both of those matches, like all of BGSU's home men's soccer contests in 2013, will begin at 7:00 p.m. at Cochrane Field.
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