CCU

Men’s Soccer Takes Top Honors in Big South Pre-Season Poll

       

Men’s Soccer Takes Top Honors in Big South Pre-Season Poll

CONWAY, S.C. – For the fifth consecutive season, the Coastal Carolina University men’s soccer team is considered the favorite in the Big South Conference preseason poll, the Big South Conference announced this morning, August 17. Senior CCU forward Jordie Hughes (Victoria, British Columbia/Spectrum) was voted the Pre-Season Player of the Year in the same vote.

Coastal (14-8-1, 4-3 Big South in 2004) is coming off a season where they won the Big South Conference Tournament for the second consecutive season and advanced into the NCAA Tournament for the fourth year in a row.

The Chanticleers captured nine first-place votes and 114 of the possible 128 overall points to finish ahead of Birmingham-Southern, who was the regular season champions a season ago. BSC tallied nine first-place votes and 108 points.

Liberty, who received one first place vote, finished tied with Winthrop for third-place with 87 points. Radford had 65 points to finish fifth, followed by High Point (two first-place votes and 44 points), UNC Asheville (38) and VMI (33).

Hughes was the Big South’s scoring leader last year with 43 points on 16 goals and 11 assists. The 2004 All-Big South First Team Member captured four first-place votes and 13 points overall to finish ahead of Birmingham-Southern’s Karim Dietz, who had three first-place votes and nine points overall.

The 2005 Big South Men’s Soccer Preseason Poll and Player of Year candidates are voted on by the Conference’s head coaches and sports information directors.

Listed below are the points totals each team received in the voting. The number in the parentheses is the number of first place-votes each team received.

Combined Votes

Team 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 Total

Coastal Carolina (9) 72 28 0 10 4 0 0 0 114

Birmingham-Southern (4) 32 35 36 5 0 0 0 0 108

Liberty (1) 8 21 30 15 4 9 0 0 87

Winthrop 0 28 30 25 0 0 4 0 87

Radford 0 0 0 20 36 9 0 0 65

High Point (2) 16 0 0 0 0 12 12 4 44

UNC Asheville 0 0 0 0 8 18 8 4 38

VMI 0 0 0 5 12 0 8 8 33