The Georgia Southern men's soccer team defeated the Georgia Southwestern State Hurricanes 3-0 in an exhibition match at Tormenta Stadium on Tuesday evening.
The Eagles avenged their last meeting with the Hurricanes, where they drew in a 2-2 exhibition contest in 2022.
The two teams battled the heat early on in the match, but it did not take long for the Eagles; offense to spark. In just the eighth minute, freshman Ricky Louis was able to get around his defender on the right side of the box and deliver a rolling strike with his right foot into the opposite side netting for the opening goal of the season. Just five minutes later, Louis was on the prowl again. But this time, he delivered a well-placed ball to Kevin Pierre on the left side of the box who mirrored the previous goal, this time with a left-footed finish to put the Eagles up 2-0.
While the offense settled for the proceeding 23 minutes, Georgia Southern struck again in the 36th minute after Harvey Sarajian played a ball to the center edge of the penalty box for freshman Ryan Holmes to deliver a strike in the side netting to give the Eagles a hat trick in the first half. For freshmen Louis and Holmes, it was their first collegiate goals. Although the second half saw the Hurricanes outshoot the Eagles 7-5, there were no goals from either side as Georgia Southern completed the clean sheet in match number one.
Georgia Southern led in total shots with a 13-9 margin with the Eagles also leading those on target, 8-3. Georgia Southwestern led in corner kicks with seven to the Eagles four, while the Hurricanes were called for 14 fouls, including five yellow cards, to the Eagles ten.
"The first group scored early, and they capitalized on that," Georgia Southern head coach Lee Squires said. "We looked more threatening in our final third in our attack. But to be able to play 22 guys for 45 minutes to keep pushing and to start introducing some of our patterns against someone other than ourselves is really nice. It was good to get a midfield runner with Kevin [Pierre] scoring that second goal, it was good to get Ryan [Holmes] who feeds off goals and confidence in the scoring book after a nice finish, and then it was good to get a young freshman like Ricky [Louis] off the mark as well early on."
Georgia Southern has one more exhibition match before regular season play as they travel to Tampa on Saturday, August 17, to take on South Florida at a time to be announced.
