JACKSONVILLE – It will be a pivotal weekend for the Jacksonville State soccer team with a visit to Nashville, Tennessee on Thursday and the final home outing of the2021 season on Sunday.
With ASUN Tournament implications on the line, JSU will meet Lipscomb on Thursday and renew its series with Eastern Kentucky on Sunday. Thursday's match in Music City is set for 6 p.m. and will be streamed on YouTube Live. Sunday's action against the Colonels will get started at 1 p.m. Prior to Sunday's match, Jax State will honor its five seniors. Admission is free at the JSU Soccer Field and the match will be available on ESPN+.
The five include
Alicia Pallister,
Auset Gibbs,
Reilly Kucko,
Cephana Deane and
Julia Papa. Kucko, Deane and Papa, listed as juniors will forego their final year of eligibility. All five players have made contributions to the Jax State program on and off the pitch. Pallister has left her mark on the program's record book with 16 career assists which ranks fourth all-time at JSU. She also has six career goals. Gibbs, a three-year member of the program, has played in 22 games. Kucko has been a mainstay in the midfield and has been an offensive contributor with four goals in her career, including two this season. Deane came to JSU in 2019 and has accumulated seven goals and enters today's match as the club's leader in goals. Papa wraps up a career that has seen her be on the Gamecocks' backline, bolstering the defense.
The Gamecocks enter the weekend with a point in their pocket after recording a draw last Sunday with Bellarmine. The points are gathered against opponents in the ASUN West Division as EKU and Central Arkansas are the division frontrunners after two wins on the first weekend against division sides. Lipscomb grabbed three points with a win last weekend before falling to the Colonels in its last outing. The top-three teams from each division and the next two point producing squads will make up the right-team ASUN Soccer Championship Field in late October.
Thursday's meeting with the Bisons will be the fifth time the two programs have met on the pitch with both having a pair of wins. JSU won the first two meetings with LU as they were members of the ASUN, while the Bisons have claimed the last two meetings in non-conference action in 2015 and 2019.
Sunday's match with Eastern Kentucky will be the 17th meeting between the two sides in a series that dates back to 2005. EKU holds an 11-4-1 lead in the previous 16 meetings. EKU and JSU will meet for the first time as ASUN foes after 16 meetings as members of the Ohio Valley Conference. The Gamecocks snapped a five-match losing skid to EKU last March with a 4-0 blanking in Richmond, Kentucky.
JSU and Lipscomb start the weekend as two of the top-four shooting teams in the ASUN. The Bisons lead the league with 230 shots on the season, while the Gamecocks have turned in 189 through 15 matches. LU averages 16.4 shots per match and JSU has posted just over 12 shots per outing.
