Complete HCAC Tournament Bracket

Yellow Jackets Set for Appearance in HCAC Tournament

DEFIANCE, Ohio – The Defiance College men’s soccer team went 3-2-1 over its final six Heartland Conference games and clinched fourth place and the final spot in the four-team HCAC Tournament with a 5-1 win over Anderson on Saturday afternoon.

DC entered the match in a tie for fifth with Manchester and trailed third-place Anderson by three points in the standings. The Jackets 5-1 victory over Anderson set things up for a trip to the postseason and Transylvania’s 4-0 win over Manchester sealed DC’s berth.

The Jackets ended the regular season with a 4-3-1 mark in HCAC play and will travel to the top-seeded Pioneers of Transylvania for a first-round match on Wednesday afternoon. Transy went 12-2-1 overall and notched a 7-1 mark in league play to claim the regular season crown.

The other semifinal match will pit Rose-Hulman (14-3-1, 6-2) against Hanover (8-7-3, 5-2-1). Both first-round games will start on Wednesday afternoon at 2:00 pm with the winners advancing to the championship game on Sat., Nov. 4 on the field of the highest remaining seed.

Transy topped Defiance by a 3-1 margin at Winsper-Knobel Field on Oct. 7. In that contest, the Pioneers got goals from Matt Burton and Thomas Lefler to jump to a 2-0 lead in the opening 45 minutes and held off a late DC surge for the win.

Daniel Meehan brought the Jackets to within a single goal with a strike with 10 minutes remaining, but Transy put the game away with a score in the final two minutes.

Meehan led Defiance throughout the regular season with six goals and posted 13 points while Karl Eustache and Benji Hughes each added five goals and three assists for 13 points. Brandon Morgan has been solid between the pipes all season long, logging nearly 1,500 minutes and 97 saves with a 1.78 goals against average.

The 2006 season has been a tale of two teams for the Yellow Jackets as DC limped out of the gates to a 1-8 mark in its first nine contests but has outscored its opponents by a 26-12 margin since that point while posting a 5-3-1 mark to close the season.