Drury Panthers Host NCAA 1st Round This Weekend

Coming off their first Great Lakes Valley Conference Tournament championship and about to embark on their first NCAA-II Tournament appearance, the Drury men’s soccer Panthers climbed one spot to No. 2 nationally in the latest NSCAA/adidas Top 25 national rankings released Tuesday.

Drury (20-1-0) trails only Fort Lewis (Colo.) College (19-1-0) in this week’s rankings. Previous No. 1 Millersville (Pa.) slipped to fourth, with a 17-2-0 record, with a weekend loss in its conference tournament.

The Panthers of first-year coach Ryan Swan are one of three GLVC teams in the poll this week, with Northern Kentucky (15-5-2) – a 1-0 loser to Drury in Sunday’s GLVC Tournament finals – coming in at No. 17 and Lewis (13-3-2) at No. 20.

Those two teams and Ashland (13-3-2), which is in the “Others Receiving Votes” category this week, will participate in the NCAA-II Super Region IV tournament this Friday and Sunday at Harrison Stadium.

Their first-ever venture into the NCAA Division II Tournament will begin with a very familiar foe for the Drury men’s soccer Panthers, who learned Monday night they’ll square off against Northern Kentucky in the first round of Super Region 4 on Friday (7 p.m.) at Harrison Stadium.

The top-seeded Panthers (20-1-0) and fourth-seeded Norse (15-5-2) will meet again just five days after Drury defeated NKU 1-0 on Sunday for the Great Lakes Valley Conference Tournament championship on the same Harrison turf. That avenged, for Drury, a 2-1 loss to the Norse – at Harrison – on Oct. 16, the Panthers’ lone setback this season.

Ashland (12-2-5) of the Great Lakes Intercollegiate Athletic Conference (GLIAC) is the second seed and will play third-seeded Lewis (13-3-2) from the GLVC in the opening contest Friday at 4 p.m. at Harrison.

Friday’s two winners will meet at 1 p.m. on Sunday at Harrison to determine the Super Region 4 champion and who moves on to the national quarterfinals a week later, to be hosted by the winner of this weekend’s action.