The Massachusetts men’s soccer team scored seven goals in its 7-1 thrashing of UMass Lowell on Wednesday. The tally is the team’s highest since Oct. 20, 2002, which was another 7-1 win over St. Bonaventure.
UMass (2-1-2) was led by its goal-scoring star Alec Hughes, who netted a hat trick. Hughes now sits second place on the school’s all-time goal scoring list. His 41 collegiate goals leave him just seven shy of first.
“He just gets better all the time,” head coach Fran O’Leary said. “Freshman year to now, he just keeps getting better. Today, he was a handful. That’s six goals in the last three games: for some forwards, that’s a season’s work. And obviously, we believe more will come from Alec.”
Hughes used his height advantage to rise like a salmon, nodding home a 15th minute header to put his name onto the scoresheet for the first time against the River Hawks. Left back Chris Giglio unleashed a long throw-in towards the box, which was steered in the direction of the Minutemen’s striker by Aidan Kelly. Hughes used a UMass Lowell (4-1-2) defender as leverage and jumped above the pack to finish off the move.
Twenty minutes later, Hughes was in the midst of a breakaway when he was hacked down from behind inside the area, earning himself a penalty kick. He wasted no time adding the opportunity to his rapidly growing goal count. The goalkeeper guessed correctly, but the placement of the spot kick into the left-side netting was not to be denied.
Hughes completed his first hat trick of the season in style, chipping River Hawks goalkeeper JR Gawel. UMass midfielder Layton Purchase won a duel in the middle of the pitch, sending the ball fluttering towards the net. Hughes exploited a miscommunication from the opposing backline, using his speed and strength to get into an advantageous position where he scored against the helpless netminder. The graduate student now has six goals in 2024, and is tied for fourth nationally.
While Hughes draws the headlines, his attacking teammates had themselves a high-quality performance across the board. “I think 13 of our 20 shots hit the target, a very high percentage,” Coach O’Leary said. “So the guys did very well. Seven goals sort of speaks for itself.”
In a match where everything seemed to go the way of the Minutemen, even the central defender Kelly got in on the fun. The Northern Ireland-raised junior opened the scoring with a glancing header off a well-placed Matt Cence corner kick after just six minutes. In his 40th appearance with the team, Kelly scored and assisted in the game for the second time each in his UMass career.
In the 69th minute, the former Stanford product Layton Purchase utilized another long throw-in, this time from Matt Fordham, to deposit a header into the bottom left corner with dazzling precision. The Minutemen dominated in the air all game, and Purchase’s first goal with UMass was no different.
Shane Velez hit the back of the net for a second consecutive game, as the sophomore was there on the rebound of a Cence attempt from very close range. This marks two goals in two starts for Velez in 2024.
Just when the damage seemed done, Aaron O’Malley left UMass Lowell one last parting gift, with the clock nearing its expiration. A blocked shot bounced fortuitously for O’Malley well outside the box, and he wasted absolutely no time stepping into a whistling volley and tacking on the seventh Minutemen goal of the day.
UMass outscored its previous four fixtures combined in this dominating attacking performance. The team will now turn its attention to spreading goals out across all future matches.
“The challenge for us will be, we won’t do that all the time,” O’Leary said. “What about the games where the goals are harder to come by? We’ve got to show the same strong, enthusiastic mentality when we’re tied or behind as when we’re ahead.”
The Minutemen are set to host Brown next on Saturday, Sept. 14 at Rudd Field. Kickoff will take place at 1 p.m.
Cameron Pellegrino can be reached at [email protected].
