For most college teams, tournament time means the beginning of a new season, records are tossed out the window and the fresh start gets underway. That certainly is the case with Lee University Coach Derek Potteiger and his Lee men’s soccer team. They enter Gulf South Conference Tournament action in Pensacola, Fla. on Saturday at 8 p.m. in the quarterfinals against top-seeded University of West Florida, 7-0-1 in GSC and 9-1-4 overall. The 8th-seeded Flames are 3-3-4, 4-6-6.
It has been a year of being so close to victory in several games for Potteiger’s club this year.
The tally shows all four GSC defeats were by one goal and only two goals were totaled by opponents in two of those meetings.
Goals were hard to come by for the Flames. They scored 19 overall and held the other side to 16. In an Oct. 6 meeting with West Florida at the Ray Conn Sports Complex, Lee and the Argos battled to a 0-0 draw.
“The college season is all about being ready at the end,” said Coach Potteiger. “We of course want to perform and win every game that we play in, but the reality is that the playoffs are where you can make the most noise. The results this season have not gone our way, and we are all disappointed about that, but we are a confident group heading into the post-season and we believe we have everything still to play for and hopefully can make a bit of a run at the most important time.”
“As I have said all season, we have performed well all year, particularly in the GSC. We just haven’t finished chances at the rate we have needed to be much higher in the standings at this point. But we played well against UWF in early October, and feel like we have gotten better as a team since then, and so we have zero fear going into this game,” stressed Potteiger.
“We certainly have a healthy respect for West Florida, as a program in general and specifically the team this year. We are absolutely looking forward to the game on Friday and trying to go out and execute for 90 minutes. The game will ultimately be decided on a handful of moments and we hope we can prepare well enough and then execute when it’s needed so those key moments turn the game our way.”
“We are really healthy at this point and so unless anything strange happens in practice, we expect to have a strong group ready for the game on Friday,” pointed out the Lee coach. “ We started the season, and specifically preseason with a serious group of players out and struggling with injuries, but I’m grateful to our trainer, Paige Wisebaker, and the rest of our medical team here at Lee to get, and keep, our guys healthy at the most important part of the season.”
While scoring 19 goals this season, junior Daniel Garvilla has been the leader with five goals. He is followed closely by graduate student Marion Grossmann who tallied four goals and picked up two assist in 13 games. Red-shirt sophomore Jakob Buhrkuhl had manned the goal in all 16 games and has allowed 16 goals while picking up 48 saves and posting a record of 4-6-6.
The stats show the Flames have out-shot their opponents 106-99 for a 205 total in the first half all year, but in the second half have dropped back to 61-79 for a total of 140, meaning they have been out-shot by 65 shots for the year.
The 2024 Gulf South Conference Men's Soccer Championship will begin with quarterfinals on November 9 with the top four-seeds hosting. The semifinals and championship matches will then be hosted by the Huntsville Sports Commission on November 14 and 16, respectively, and will be played at Loretta P. Spencer Sports Complex Championship Field in Huntsville, Ala.