HUNTINGTON, W.Va. — South Carolina’s men’s soccer team is one win from its first conference championship match in more than a decade, but it will have to beat a familiar problem to get there.
The sixth-seeded Gamecocks (11-5-2) play second-seeded Marshall in the Sun Belt Conference Tournament semifinals Wednesday at 7 p.m. at Hoops Family Field. The winner meets West Virginia or Coastal Carolina in the title match on Nov. 15, which means a South Carolina school could be playing for the championship either way.
Marshall has had the Gamecocks’ number. The Thundering Herd lead the all-time series 17-5-1 and have won 10 straight meetings, most recently 2-1 in Columbia on Oct. 30. South Carolina’s last win in the series came in 2016, and it is 2-8-1 all-time in Huntington. The 14th-ranked Herd (11-2-4) reached the semifinal with a 4-1 quarterfinal win over Kentucky on Sunday, scoring on four of their six shots on goal in front of more than 1,900 fans.
South Carolina has reason to believe anyway. The Gamecocks climbed to No. 10 in the NCAA RPI released Monday and spent a week at No. 1 in the coaches poll earlier this season, the first time the program has ever held the top spot. Mika Habel, voted the league’s top defender this fall and the team leader with 10 assists, and leading scorer Alejandro Velazquez-Lopez, with seven goals, both made the all-conference first team.
This is the program’s second Sun Belt semifinal, after 2023. Its last appearance in a conference title match came in 2014, a 2-1 loss to Old Dominion, and the Gamecocks won Conference USA tournament titles in 2005 and 2010.
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