Saturday, October 22, 2022
Rider Broncs (2-8-3, 1-3-2 MAAC) vs. Marist Red Foxes (6-6-1, 2-4-0 MAAC)
Location: Lawrenceville, NJ – Ben Cohen Field
Kickoff: 7 p.m.
Live Video: ESPN3
Live Stats: GoBroncs.com

What You Need To Know
- The Rider University men's soccer team plays host to Marist in a rematch of the 2021 MAAC Men's Soccer Championship Game Saturday night on ESPN3.
- Prior to the game, the Broncs will honor their five-member senior class of Matthew Brummet, Nick Cruz, Ryan Dougherty, Regis Dulck and Jeremy Peterson on Senior Night.
- Both teams enter the game in need of points to fuel their chances of qualifying for the MAAC Championships. Marist enters the game with six points, while the Broncs have five. Six teams will qualify with the sixth-place team in the league currently having 10 points and another team in seventh with nine.
- Last time out, the Broncs lost a tough one to Mount St. Mary's, 3-2. Rider opened the scoring with Cruz's first collegiate goal, before the Mountaineers scored twice before halftime. Babacar Diene scored for the second-consecutive game to equalize, but just over a minute later, the Mountaineers scored the game winner.
- Rider leads the all-time series with Marist, 16-12-3. However, Marist has come out on top in each of the last three – two by victory and the third being a tie in the 2021 MAAC Championship Game and Marist advancing on PK's. The Broncs' last win over Marist on Ben Cohen Field came in 2013. Since then, Marist took wins in 2015 and 2019 and the two teams played to a tie in 2017.
- Marist is coming off a 4-2 win over Canisius on Wednesday. The Red Foxes are led by Jared Juleau, whose 11 points and five assists are both team highs. Henrique Cruz and Richard Morel pace Marist with four goals apiece, while Jacob Schulman and Andre Cutler-DeJesus have scored twice each.
- Sam Ilin has played all but six minutes and 17 seconds in net this season for Marist, posting a 1.16 goals-against average and a .694 saves percentage.    
- Marist was picked to defend its MAAC Championship in the preseason coaches poll.
- Adel Al Masude leads the Broncs with two goals and seven points this season, including tallies in consecutive games at Rutgers and Central Connecticut. The goal against the Blue Devils was the game winner. All three of his assists came Oct. 8 at Fairfield.
- With goals in consecutive games against Niagara and Mount St. Mary's, Babacar Diene tied Al Masude's two goals.
- Lenny Cidolit has a goal and the team lead with four assists.
- Jack McGeechan has also added three assists for Rider.    
- Matt Araujo, Cidolit, Cruz, Dulck, Guillaume Sarrabayrouse, Dylan Kotch, Tom Skrocki and Mo Bocher have each contributed one goal apiece.
- Veinante has played the majority of time in net so far this season for the Broncs, posting a 2.32 goals-against average and a .642 saves percentage. His shutouts at Central Connecticut and Iona were the first of his Rider career.
- The Broncs bounced back from a tough 3-0 loss to Quinnipiac on Oct. 12 with a hard-fought point at Niagara on Oct. 15. Rider twice went down a goal before equalizing each time on goals from Diene and Araujo, respectively, to become just the second team this season to take a point from the Purple Eagles.
- After falling to Manhattan in their MAAC opener at home on Sept. 28, the Broncs pieced together four points in their next two games with a scoreless tie at Iona (Oct. 5) and a 3-2 win at Fairfield (Oct. 8).
- The shutout at Iona was Veinante's second shutout of the year. He made five saves.
- Al Masude assisted on all three goals against Fairfield, setting up Sarrabayrouse on a cross in the run of play, Cidolit off a free kick and Dulck off a corner kick.
- Kotch's goal was the first of his Rider career at Central Connecticut, while Bocher also netted his first-collegiate goal against NJIT.  
- Cidolit and Veinante had played every minute of the season prior to subbing out during the Princeton game.  
- After playing NJIT to a 2-2 tie in the Broncs' home opener on Sept. 18, the Broncs fell at Princeton, 3-0, on Sept. 23.
- The Broncs opened the season with five-straight road contests. The last time Rider played as many as five-straight games away from home to start the season and had its home opener so late on the calendar was 2008, when the Broncs played their first six games at road or neutral fields, before playing in Lawrenceville for the first time on Sept. 21.
- After dropping four-straight games to open the season at Seton Hall, Virginia, Penn and Rutgers, the Broncs responded with a 2-0 clean sheet at Central Connecticut on Sept. 14.
- The Broncs were picked second in the MAAC by the league's coaches, a year after reaching the MAAC Championship Game for the fifth time in the last seven seasons last year. The Broncs erased a two-goal deficit in the title game at top-seeded Marist and played the Red Foxes to a tie before Marist advanced on PK's.
- Graduate forward Zaki Alibou, the 2021 MAAC Offensive Player of the Year, was tabbed MAAC Preseason Player of the Year. Alibou led the Broncs with 10 goals and five assists a year ago and is listed on SoccerWire.com's Forwards to Watch for this season. However, he's missed all but two games and 87 minutes this season due to injuries.
- Also back for the Broncs from the All-MAAC Teams last season are All-Rookie Team selections Adel Al Masude and Guillaume Veinante. Al Masude contributed four goals and four assists in his first season with the Broncs, while Veinante started nine of his 10 games played a year ago.
- The Broncs returned 61 percent of their scoring and seven of 11 starters from a year ago. In addition to Alibou (10 goals) and Al Masude (4), Lenny Cidolit (3) and Regis Dulck (2) also scored multiple goals last season.
- The Broncs have qualified for the MAAC Championships in nine-straight seasons. Rider won MAAC Championships in 1997, 1998, 2015, 2016 and 2018, while finishing as runner up in 2004, 2017 and 2021.