While the Johns Hopkins football team has gained most of the attention on campus with its recent six-game winning streak, don't overlook the men's soccer program.
Because the Blue Jays weren't ranked in the top four in the Mid-Atlantic Region, they didn't qualify for the NCAA tournament. But they accepted a bid to the Eastern College Athletic Conference Division III championship this weekend at Washington & Jefferson. Seeded No. 1, they will play Grove City (Pa.) in today's semifinals.
Hopkins (14-4) has outscored its past six opponents, 23-0. And no one has been hotter than sophomore forward Eric West, who was named the Centennial Conference's Player of the Week for the third time this season. He has 20 goals and eight assists this fall (48 points), and is one point shy of the Hopkins single-season scoring record he set in 23 games last year, when he was chosen the conference's Player of the Year with 22 goals and five assists (49 points).
The younger Blue Jays are making the biggest impact. Freshman Peter Quin is second to West in points with 13 goals and four assists, sophomore Peter Kahn has contributed five goals and one assist, and sophomore Randy Goldberg has allowed an average of 0.77 goals per game.
Coach Matt Smith, a 1988 graduate of Towson State, led the Blue Jays to a 17-3-3 record last year, when they lost in overtime to Bethany College in the NCAA final. The teams could meet again in tomorrow's ECAC championship game, since Bethany plays Washington & Jefferson in the other semifinal.
Damage control
How damaging was the 1-0 loss to Drexel suffered by Towson State's men's soccer team last weekend? Not very.
The Tigers, whose 13 wins are one short of tying the school single-season record, have qualified for the North Atlantic Conference playoffs. The top four teams are eligible, and Towson can finish no worse than third in the league at 6-3, trailing Boston and Drexel.
Towson, which is 15th in the ISAA coaches poll, is seeking its first NCAA tournament appearance. The conference champion receives an automatic bid.
Luckett up to par
Loyola College junior Brandon Luckett concluded an outstanding fall golf season at the Davis & Elkins/Snowshoe Mountain Resort Invitational in West Virginia, shooting a 151 to defeat Jeremy Jansen of Robert Morris in a sudden-death playoff and capture his third individual tournament championship. He led the Greyhounds to a fifth-place finish among 15 schools, nine strokes ahead of Towson State.
Luckett is tied for first with Fairleigh Dickinson's Eric Bleile in the Rolex District 2 collegiate golf rankings, and is No. 37 nationally.
* Loyola's women's cross country team placed second out of eight entries in the Metro Atlantic Athletic Conference Championships in New York. Sophomore Betsy Allen took fifth out of 66 runners, covering the 3.15-mile course in 20:13. Sophomore Anne-Marie Luckas was seventh in 20:18.
Miscellaneous
Maryland senior forward Tod Herskovitz is among the 15 finalists for the Missouri Athletic Club Sports Foundation's Collegiate Soccer Player of the Year award. . . . Goucher junior Kevin Probst and freshman Russ Drylle earned first-team All-Capital Athletic Conference honors while leading their men's
cross country team to a second-place finish at the CAC championships. That's the highest finish ever for the Gophers. Probst and Drylie took the top two individual spots at the Cabrini (Pa.) College Invitational.