Elon Hosts Marshall, Hofstra Visits South Florida to Open NCAA Men’s Soccer Championship
CAA Men’s Soccer Champion Hofstra and regular season title winner Elon are both in the 48-team field for the NCAA Men’s Soccer Championship and will play First Round games Thursday.
Elon, which makes its first appearance in the tournament since 2015 as an at-large selection, will host Marshall on Thursday at Rudd Field, while Hofstra is in for the second consecutive year and will fly to Tampa to face South Florida. The CAA placed multiple teams in the NCAA Championship for the ninth time in the last 13 seasons and first since 2018.
Hofstra is 14-3-3 entering the NCAA Championship with the 14 wins tied for second nationally. The Pride won the CAA Championship on Saturday in North Carolina to earn the conference’s automatic qualifier for the second straight season. Hofstra, which is No. 25 in the RPI, is 5-2-2 against the top 100 this season.
South Florida went 8-6-4 in the regular season and fell to top-seeded FIU in the American Athletic Conference Final on Sunday in Miami. The Bulls had won five straight entering the conference title game and went 5-1-3 in The American, which is the nation’s No. 3-rated conference in the RPI.
Elon is 11-4-3 through Saturday and ranks second in the nation with 11 shutouts this fall while standing eighth in goals-against average. The Phoenix won its first outright CAA regular season title with a 20-point campaign and is No. 29 in the RPI with a 5-3-2 mark against top-100 competition.
Marshall is 10-3-3 on the year and earned the No. 2 seed in the Sun Belt Championship before being tripped up by James Madison in the Sun Belt Quarterfinals. The Thundering Herd, which won the 2020-21 national championship, is ranked No. 9 by the United Soccer Coaches and No. 11 by Top Drawer Soccer entering the NCAA Championship.
Both games can be streamed on ESPN+ with Elon-Marshall starting at 6 p.m. and Hofstra-South Florida kicking off at 7 p.m.
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