The 2025 SCIAC Men’s Soccer Tournament will begin on Tuesday, Nov. 4 at 5 p.m. with #4 seed Chapman University hosting #5 seed University of La Verne, the winner of which will face #1 Occidental College at 7 p.m. on Wednesday along with #2 University of Redlands hosting #3 Pomona-Pitzer Colleges.
Tournament Central
The top-seeded Tigers will be relishing home-field advantage after running the table to claim their first-ever championship in 2023. Oxy shared the regular season title with Redlands at 21 points apiece in the most competitive men’s soccer table on record, with Pomona-Pitzer also finishing just a single point back in third while fourth and fifth place needed a record 18 points to qualify. The Tigers overcame a three-match winless start to rattle off six in their final nine games, over which span they dropped a single game. SCIAC goals leader
Devin Bening (eight) led the line for the conference’s top offense which netted 27 in 12 games (2.3 per game) when no one else topped 20.
Ayden Rieke-Wey added another five goals in front of
Elijah Edelman and
Aiden Aley, who combined for 11 assists.
Tournament mainstay Redlands took the #2 seed after a 3-0 defeat to Oxy on Oct. 4 but are clicking at the right time, having won their final five consecutive games and scoring at least two goals in each since the return from injury of
Zachary Darmanyan, who topped the points point game chart with 14 (five goals, four assists) in eight appearances.
Anders Beckton ranked second in total points with 16 on five goals and six assists while
Connor Claborn came through in the clutch with a conference-high tying three game-winning goals.
Brady Bachman’s .767 save percentage on 4.6 per game ranked second in conference play.
Pomona-Pitzer has cemented a stupendous turnaround from last year’s ninth-place finish, more than doubling a 2024 point total of nine to come just one point shy of a share of the regular season title. The conference’s best defense surrendered just one goal per game as
Jasper Broad stood head and shoulders above the goalkeeping field with a save percentage of .820 that ranks more than 50 points ahead of the next qualifier. Standout defender
Niclas Ulrich paced the squad with nine points on three goals and assists while
Seb Lee Jara notched a pair of game-winning goals. Both previous matchups with Redlands this season ended in 2-2 ties.
Chapman is in familiar territory after scoring a pair of upsets to reach the final of last year’s tournament, but this time have the added benefit of hosting in the First Round thanks to a 1-0 victory over La Verne back on Sept. 20. That followed a defeat to the Leopards just 10 days prior before conference play began, when a three-match win streak to open league play propped up the Panthers to seal their berth with a fifth win on Decision Day.
Dylan Paine tied for ninth in the conference with four goals, two of which were game-winners while the Panther defense helped
Alex Glynn to post the third-best goals-against average (1.28).
The Leopards return to the tournament for the first time in three years since taking the #6 seed in an expanded field due to the COVID-19 pandemic, whereas their last appearance in a four-team field came as the #2 seed back in 2016. La Verne was one of just three teams to post a positive goal differential in a chaotic table, with
Hector Duenas-Pena standing tall in goal with a .758 save percentage and tying with Broad for the lead with three shutouts.
Diego Soto topped the team statistics with four goals and shared the lead in points (eight) with
Juan Manzano.
The winner of each semifinal game will meet in the Tournament final on Saturday, Nov. 8 on the campus of the highest remaining seed.
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