UConn Men's Soccer 2024

[Fairfield_1st]

My brother just sent me this. Is it normal or should we be worried?

 

[dbmill]

I doubt it is anything to worry about. UConn baseball always has an open tryout every fall. The difference of course is that the baseball tryout is relatively well publicized every season, while if other UConn sports have walk on tryouts, they generally don't get known to the general public.

 

[Palatine]

Football has something similar.

 

[CTpessimist]

2 guys went pro and 3 guys transferred. There are likely a couple spots.

 

[Kolumbo]

With UMass moving to the MAC, I wonder if UMass Soccer will stay in the A-10, or perhaps join the Big East with Akron.

"Of the four full MAC members that sponsored men's soccer in the 2022 season, Bowling Green, Northern Illinois, and Western Michigan moved the sport to the Missouri Valley Conference, and Akron moved it to the Big East Conference."

 

[yungdowork]

Well, I still haven't seen any news about roster additions from UConn, but they seem to have some new players listed on the roster.

Marco Valentic - 5'9 junior midfielder, previously played at Bucknell. Averaged about 60 mins last year, finished with 1G 3A.
Charlie Holmes - 6'3 junior midfielder/forward, also played at Bucknell. Led their team in points, 3rd team All-Patriot League last year.
Michael Suski - 5'10 graduate forward. Spent last year at Syracuse but hardly played, pretty major contributor for BC earlier in his career.

Still not a single freshman listed on the roster, but I'd expect to hear some more roster news soon considering we lost a few big time players. I know college soccer doesn't have a ton of fanfare, but I do wish somebody would try a little harder to at least keep fans informed. Their first exhibition match is in barely a month!

 

[gtcam]

Being an ardent UConn Mens soccer fan since the early 1960s, HCCB handles the publicity of his program a lot differently than either former HCs RR or JM.
I know he has signed at least 2 of 5 of the state's top 2024 graduating HS class but he needs to make some noise in the NBE before top tier players will again look to play in Storrs. The ACC is still the first choice for the best of the best.

 

[yungdowork]

Being an ardent UConn Mens soccer fan since the early 1960s, HCCB handles the publicity of his program a lot differently than either former HCs RR or JM.

I just find it weird because publicity/marketing is one thing, but they aren’t even giving people the tools to get excited. A one sentence tweet and a graphic goes a long way. UConn football has been showing recently that landing recruits gets fans excited even if they aren’t 5-star guys.

But, last year for example, we landed Lucas Almeida who was USCA national player of the year in high school, and they didn’t even mention him until August which is maybe 2 weeks before they start playing exhibitions. It just seems like a crazy way to handle it.

 

[yungdowork]

Well, 9 days from the first exhibition and still no mention of any freshmen on the roster or in any capacity by UConn as far as I can tell. I was able to do a bit of digging and found a few incoming freshman though.

Evan Pickering - 6'2 Forward currently with the RSL academy. Supposedly very athletic. He's apparently been playing well for his club team, but I haven't seen any games. 2022 MLS Next highlights
Alex Tupay - Defender from Arizona, started at RCB for RSL academy. Good size and apparently an excellent passer out of the back for his age. U17 MLS Next highlights
Joseph Grossman - 6'3 goalie from NJ, currently with Inter Miami's academy. Was considered to be a top 5 player in his class in all of NJ, which is pretty notable for a goalkeeper. MLS Next Showcase highlights

It is very possible that there's other incomings that I simply haven't heard about, but I'm doing what I can haha

 

[yungdowork]

The Twitter account has been pretty active today. They put out this video which references one of the incoming freshman (Alex Tupay) and actually showed a new center back.

The center back was just added to the official roster on the website today. His name is Khaya Roudette-Gregory. He’s 6’5, 230 lbs and from London. He was first team All-American on the junior college circuit last year playing for Salt Lake Community College and should have 2 years of eligibility left. The freshmen are still not listed on the roster for whatever reason, but they’re at practice.

 

[dbmill]

The Twitter account has been pretty active today. They put out this video which references one of the incoming freshman (Alex Tupay) and actually showed a new center back.

The center back was just added to the official roster on the website today. His name is Khaya Roudette-Gregory. He’s 6’5, 230 lbs and from London. He was first team All-American on the junior college circuit last year playing for Salt Lake Community College and should have 2 years of eligibility left. The freshmen are still not listed on the roster for whatever reason, but they’re at practice.

UConn men's soccer has their first exhibition game of the season this weekend at Army. No wonder the Twitter account is getting active.

 

[Palatine]

Men's Soccer Announce Six Additions to 2025 Roster - University of Connecticut Athletics

STORRS, Conn. – UConn men's soccer head coach Chris Gbandi has announced the addition of six players to his 2025 roster from the transfer portal.

uconnhuskies.com

 

[yungdowork]

I believe the Kyle Durham transfer from Pittsburgh puts us at 2 redshirt freshmen and a true freshman at the goalkeeper position. They all have pretty good size. Hopefully one of them is ready to step up. We’ve been pretty blessed in the goalie department recently

 

[yungdowork]

Several new additions to the roster today, including all of the previously mentioned freshmen as well as:

Justin Hess - Redshirt freshman goalie
Matias Paredes - sophomore midfielder
Mateo Depinho - freshman midfielder
Giovanni Dennis - freshman midfielder
Alfonso Arredondo - freshman forward

Should be finalized now. Will be interesting to see how some of the new faces look this weekend

 

[yungdowork]

I'm not sure what happened with the first exhibition? The team was supposed to play Army in West Point yesterday afternoon but the game mysteriously vanished off the schedule and wasn't referenced on twitter or anywhere else I can find. I checked Army's schedule and they still had the game listed but no results or anything. Maybe it got canceled and they're just looking forward to Merrimack next weekend?

 

[Fairfield_1st]

Incoming class.

MSOC Announces Class of 2028 - University of Connecticut Athletics

STORRS, Conn. – UConn men's soccer head coach Chris Gbandi has announced the addition of eight student-athletes to the class of 2028 on Tuesday morning.

uconnhuskies.com

 

[LIuconn]

I don't follow UConn soccer. When I was there 2005-08 they were good under ray Reid. Now they stink? What happened

 

[Fairfield_1st]

I don't follow UConn soccer. When I was there 2005-08 they were good under ray Reid. Now they stink? What happened

Ray Reid happened. They weren't good under him for a number of years. Like many under performing coaches we've had (mostly but not entirely football), he was kept on a little too long. I hope Gbandi can get it done, but I wasn't impressed with his previous coaching results and I thought there were better options out there. I pray my feelings are wrong and he returns us to competitiveness. Notice I'm setting the bar pretty low with that term.

 

[yungdowork]

I don't follow UConn soccer. When I was there 2005-08 they were good under ray Reid. Now they stink? What happened

Well they don't stink. They were an average to above-average Big East team last year. The problem is that both the Big East and the whole northeast region is not very good. Georgetown is the only ranked Big East team going into the season. Both of the last 2 offseasons we had some of our most talented players jump ship to the ACC, which you can’t blame them for because it’s simply a better product.

I’ve also not been super impressed with Gbandi. His subbing in particular is kind of bewildering sometimes, and it seems like our bench almost always has less energy than our opponents’.

The last thing I think comes down to the school/students. They are not filling up the student section at all on a game-to-game basis, and the section isn’t humongous. I think they gotta start giving out some free t-shirts or something

 

[yungdowork]

Free admission to the exhibition vs Merrimack today at 2 in case anyone doesn’t have their Saturday booked up yet.

 

[dbmill]

UConn starts the season with a 6-0 win at home against Stonehill.

 

[Bomber36]

Really nicely done broadcast by UConn+. Fun game to watch, as well.

 

[arch]

Curious about status of Lucas A.

 

[huskymedic]

 

[yungdowork]

Really good showings for a lot of new guys. The 2 Bucknell guys both scored on their debuts, with Valentic scoring 2 and Charlie Holmes getting 1. I thought Michael Suski looked really good, finished with a goal and an assist and had opportunities to double both those tallies. Him and Sabri Hanni were our best players in my opinion, but Testori and Valentic also played really well.

The freshmen were just okay. Tupay started in defense and looked the best of the freshman in my opinion. Pickering looked really imposing and ended up in promising positions a lot, but skied his best opportunity. Giovanni Dennis played 45 minutes but really not too much to note good or bad.