1. Top four men's teams are off to perfect start

• by Soccer America , Aug 28, 2006

North Carolina, SMU, Virginia and defending national champion Maryland,  the top four teams in the Soccer America Men's Top 25, were perfect on the opening weekend of the 2006 season. Each recorded a pair of shutout victories.

No. 1 North Carolina beat William & Mary, 2-0, and Central Florida, 1-0, at the Wake Forest adidas Classic. In the victory over UCF, St. John's transfer Garry Lewis headed home his first score in Carolina Blue. Host Wake Forest won the tournament on goal difference with a 5-0 win over UCF and a 1-0 victory over W&M.

No. 2 SMU won the Best Western Downtown Plaza/Golden Hurricane Classic with 1-0 victories over Wisconsin and Wisconsin-Milwaukee. Freshman Leone Cruz was Tournament MVP with the winning goal in both games.

No. 3 Virginia also recorded a pair of 1-0 wins to capture the Virginia Classic. Yannick Reyering and Jeremy Barlow scored in wins over Davidson and UC Santa Barbara, respectively. UCSB had blitzed Akron, 5-0, Friday to spoil Caleb Porter's debut as Zips coach.

Maryland knocked off ranked Old Dominion, 2-0, before a record crowd of 3,331 at the ODU Soccer Stadium, then returned home to beat Binghamton, 3-0, before 3,486 fans at Ludwig Field. Junior Stephen King scored goals in both games for the No. 4 Terrapins.

Connecticut was one of three teams ranked in the preseason Top 10 to lose to unranked teams at home. Former U.S. U-17 resident Trini Gomez scored off a cross from Bobby Burling to give Loyola Marymount a 1-0 victory to the disappointment of 5,489 fans at Morrone Stadium.

Fordham recorded its biggest upset in a decade when Patrick McNamee and Kevin Meyer scored to give the Rams a 2-1 win at South Florida, which lost Trinidadian Tohance Marshall to a red card for throwing a punch and played a man down for 58 minutes.

Notre Dame fell to UAB, 1-0, on Jerson Monteiro's goal in the 105th minute on the first day of the Mike Berticelli Memorial Tournament. The Irish recovered to score four unanswered goals and beat Creighton, 4-1, on Sunday. Indiana won the tournament with a pair of late victories: 1-0 over Creighton on Mike Ackley's overtime goal and 2-1 over UAB on Julian Dieterle's goal in the 89th minute off an Ackley assist.

Other weekend highlights:

• Clemson opened with a 4-3 victory over archrival South Carolina before 5,009 fans at Riggs Field. Jamaica international Dane Richards scored twice in the last 19 minutes to give the Tigers the comeback victory. Brazilian Frederico Moojen scored a goal and an assist in his Tiger debut. David Smith scored two goals for South Carolina, which led three times.
  
• Clemson Other upsets involving ranked teams included: Furman (2-0 over Penn State), Tulsa (3-0 over Wisconsin-Milwaukee) and UIC (1-0 over Saint Louis).