The string of upsets didn't stop when the weekend did, with the second- and third-ranked teams in the country falling hard. Elsewhere, in a big non-conference matchup, No. 9 Indiana got two goals from Andy Adlard to send the Hoosiers past No. 13 Kentucky, 3-0.

In Fairfax, Va. No. 2 Maryland fell to George Mason, 2-0, on the road, despite playing up a man for more than half the game. It was the Patriots' first win over the Terps since 2001.

"It was a very un-Maryland like performance tonight and I take full responsibility for not having us ready today," head coach Sasho Cirovski said after the game. "We just weren't very connected today."

In Winston-Salem, the nation's longest non-conference winning streak came to an end, as No. 22 Charlotte upset No. 3 Wake Forest, 3-1. The win was the 49ers' first over a top-5 team since 1994.

"This was a tremendous result," Charlotte coach Jeremy Gunn said after the win. "We played great soccer tonight and we showed people what we are capable of as a soccer program. Wake Forest has been one of the bench mark programs in college soccer. We expected Wake Forest to attack us since they pass the ball better than any team in the country. I am just so proud of how our players fought and battled tonight." 

Staying in the ACC, Boston College lost to Siena, 1-0, giving the Saints their first-ever win over an ACC team.

On the schedule for Wednesday night are two big regional clashes between top-25 teams, as newly ranked No. 15 Ohio State hits the road to take on No. 1 Akron (Click here for live stats or here to watch the game, live online [with subscription]) and No. 16 BU takes on No. 23 Brown, with the Terriers looking to win their fourth straight and Brown looking to stay unbeaten (Watch Live or Listen).  

On Tuesday, we profiled Akron's Michael Nanchoff, now in his second week on the Soccer America Team of the Week after assisting on four goals in Akron's 6-0 win over Bowling Green on Saturday. Nanchoff's a second-generation Akron player, after his father, George -- later a professional and national-team player -- and uncle Louie starred for the Zips in the early 1970's.

After a weekend that spared only a handful of teams in the top-25 from upsets and saw just five teams in the top-10 emerge without a loss, the NSCAA poll looked understandably...altered on Monday.

Akron, who destroyed Bowling Green, 6-0, hung onto first. Only one other team in the country held its position. Two teams fell out of the top-10, seven dropped out of the top-25 and seven more replaced them - led by now-undefeated Ohio State in the 15th spot.

In the top-10, No. 2 Maryland was rewarded for knocking off then-No. 2 North Carolina with a late goal on Friday night, jumping up two spots, while UNC fell to fifth. UCLA, who took two wins over unranked teams, bounded up from No. 10 to No. 5. Heading back to the ACC, Wake Forest used a win over No. 8  Harvard (still at No. 8) to make its way up to No. 3.

South Florida and Cal fell to No. 6 and No. 7, respectively, after weekend losses, while UCSB's win over UC Irvine on Sunday wasn't enough to offset a loss to San Diego State, as the Gauchos sunk from No. 7 to No. 11. The other team to fall out of the top-10, Louisville, plummeted from No. 9 to No. 17 after a weekend that saw the Cardinals fall, 4-0, to Notre Dame on Friday and tie Marquette, 2-2, on Sunday.

The two top-10 evacuees created room for Indiana to make its way from No. 13 to No. 9 after a win over Wisconsin and for Monmouth to continue its meteoric rise to new heights, surging to No. 10 - the program's highest-ever ranking - after starting the year at 8-0-0.

Other interesting movers & shakers start with the Buckeyes, who downed defending Big Ten champs and No. 21 Michigan State on Sunday to blow out to the program's best-ever start. Look for them to be tested on Wednesday when OSU heads to Akron.

Virginia and Duke didn't suffer too much for losses to Clemson and BC, respectively, falling from No. 11 to No. 12 and No. 12 to No. 14, in that order. But Dartmouth, who fell to Hartwick, and Creighton, who fell to Portland, did, as both the Big Green and Blue Jays dropped from No. 15 and No. 17 to the Others-Receiving-Votes section.

And finally, UMBC cracks the top-25. The owner of two of the nation's top three scorers, in Andrew Bulls (first) and Levi Houapeu (third), the Retrievers are playing great soccer. And oh yeah - they're still undefeated, at 9-0-0.

Photo Courtesy of Northwestern

Northwestern's Nick Brilowski brings us the story of the Wildcats' Oliver Kupe, a first-generation American born of two parents from the Democratic Republic of Congo, who has a pretty robust grasp of a good chunk of the world's languages. One of five children, and the only son, of Drs. Joachim and Anne-Marie Kupe, Oliver's become a rising star on the pitch -- as he's been for a long time in the classroom -- for Northwestern. The story starts off with a pretty great lede, and just gets better: 'One could be forgiven if they made a visit to the Kupe home in suburban Detroit and came away with the impression that they had accidentally stumbled upon the United Nations.' Read the full story here!

Ohio State goalie Matt Lampson has put together three straight shutouts, including a blanking of No. 21 Michigan State on Sunday.

A weekend that started with an assault on the nation's elite, with four teams in the top-12 falling to unranked clubs on Friday, became an all-out pillaging of the top-25 by weekend's end.

By the end of Sunday, 11 teams in the NSCAA poll had fallen to teams outside of it. Still more ended in ties. Click here for Friday results or here for Saturday and Sunday's finals.

Meanwhile, in Columbus, Ohio, one of those unranked teams is off to the best start in program history.

After knocking off No. 21 Michigan State, 1-0, in East Lansing on Sunday - MSU's first home loss to a Big Ten team for the defending regular season and tournament champions since Nov. 4, 2007 - the Ohio State now stands at 5-0-3.

A largely untested team learned a lot with the win, said Ohio State coach John Bluem. About how to battle through a conference game. About what it means to go on the road and take three points from a team in a year when the Big Ten changed its bylaws to denote the regular season champ as the official conference champion. And, most importantly, about how to survive.

"We have a fairly young team, a lot of freshmen and sophomores, and they're getting to play for us," Bluem said. "I think this game showed them quite a bit about the difference between regular season games conference game in terms of intensity and desire to win the game. Nobody gives any ground in conference matches."

"I'm a little bit surprised," he said of the undefeated start. "If you looked at our schedule, and you look at how the teams are doing that have been on the schedule, they've been difficult games. They're not Akron; they're not Michigan State, though. I think Michigan State was the first big test for us, and we got past it. They were tremendous in the second half against us, and were very unfortunate to have not scored."

The Buckeyes shot ahead in the 18th minute, getting a goal from 10 yards out by Sam Scales. And after a first half that saw Ohio State out-shoot MSU, 9-5, the Spartans struck back. Blasting 10 shots in the second half to OSU's five, Michigan State looked every bit the defending champs.

Meanwhile, OSU goalie Matt Lampson looked not one bit like a redshirt freshman who hadn't earned a starting spot until Sept. 18, splitting time with sophomore Ryan Dalton (3 starts, 0.62 GAA, .905 save percentage) to open the year. Now the official starter in net, Lampson hasn't allowed a goal in 322:19 minutes of play this year.

Making four saves and a series of big defensive plays, Lampson out-dueled Michigan State's Avery Steinlage, whose own NCAA-record scoreless streak ended last week. And on Monday, Lampson took home Big Ten Defensive Player of the Week honors.

"Going into the season, we were a little concerned about youth and inexperience," Bluem said. "But Matt and Ryan have been splitting games, and now that we've stuck with Matt for three games, he's had 3 shutouts."

On Wednesday, the Buckeyes head cross-state to show everything they've learned thus far to Akron. Top-ranked Akron. Undefeated, 7-0 Akron. The same Zips team that's outscored its opponents, 18-1 in its last five games, including a 6-0 win over Bowling Green on Saturday. A team that's allowed just one goal in seven games this year. And, finally, a team that's 44-2-4 at home since 2005.

"Going to play Akron at Akron is a big challenge," Bluem said. "They've become a powerhouse.

Ten players have scored goals for Akron. Eleven have tallied points. For Ohio State, those numbers fall to six and nine, respectively. But for an OSU team that's found ways to win - or, Bluem said, at least not lose - a game against the top-ranked team in the country on its own turf represents more than a chance to make a statement: it offers a chance for a benchmark, to see exactly how good this group of young men is.

"We're gonna prepare as best we can to go up there," he said. "But Akron's got a great team. We're gonna go into that match to see what we can do, to see how we measure up."

Sunday Results

Where the top-10 suffered the most at the hands of upset-minded non-ranked teams on Friday night, the rest of the top-25 felt the pain on Sunday. And while teams like South Florida and UCSB responded with big wins, Friday victims Louisville and St. John's could only muster ties on Sunday.

No. 3 South Florida def. Pittsburgh, 2-1
No. 5 California def. Air Force, 3-0
No. 7 UCSB def. No. 23 UC Irvine, 1-0
No. 9 Louisville tied Marquette, 2-2
No. 10 UCLA def. UNLV, 3-0
No. 16 NC State lost to Virginia Tech, 2-0
No. 17 Creighton lost to Portland, 2-1
No. 18 St. John's tied Providence, 0-0
No. 20 Kentucky def. UNC-Asheville, 3-1
No. 21 Michigan State lost to Ohio State, 1-0
No. 22 Michigan lost to Penn State, 2-0
No. 24 Cal St. Northridge lost to Coastal Carolina, 2-1
No. 25 Brown tied San Francisco, 1-1

Saturday Results

No. 8 Harvard's vaunted offense couldn't solve No. 6 Wake Forest, as the Demon Deacons won one of the week's best games, 1-0, in Winston-Salem. Meanwhile, one of the biggest upsets all year happened in Virginia, where then-winless Clemson dropped the host Cavaliers, 1-0 in ACC play.

No. 1 Akron def. Bowling Green, 6-0
No. 6 Wake Forest def. No. 8 Harvard, 1-0
No. 11 Virginia lost to Clemson, 1-0
No. 14 Dartmouth lost to Hartwick, 2-0
No. 19 Boston University def. Rhode Island, 2-1

Photo Courtesy DSPics.com

Harvard's Andre Akpan, the centerpiece of one of the nation's best offenses and two-time M.A.C. Hermann Award semifinalist, entered the season as, in the words of BU coach Neil Roberts, "the best striker in the country." On Monday, Harvard athletics spent some time profiling Akpan, the first-generation American, econ major and the all-time points leader in Harvard men's soccer history -- and a player who should easily eclipse the all-time goals record by year's end. You can read it here.

All Times Eastern
Live Stats where available

No. 3 South Florida @ Pittsburgh, 1 p.m. | Live Stats
No. 5 California vs. Air Force, 5 p.m. | Live Stats
No. 7 UCSB vs. No. 23 UC Irvine, 9:30 p.m. | Live Stats
No. 9 Louisville @ Marquette, 2 p.m. | Live Stats
No. 10 UCLA vs. UNLV, 8 p.m. | Live Stats
No. 16 NC State @ Virginia Tech, 2 p.m | Video
No. 17 Creighton vs. Portland (in Seattle, Wash.), 1 p.m. | Live Stats
No. 18 St. John's @ Providence, 3 p.m. | Live Stats
No. 20 Kentucky vs. UNC-Asheville, 2 p.m. | Live Stats
No. 21 Michigan State vs. Ohio State, 2:30 p.m. | Live Stats
No. 22 Michigan @ Penn State, 2 p.m. | Live Stats
No. 23 UC Irvine @ No. 7 UCSB, 9:30 p.m. | Live Stats
No. 24 Cal St. Northridge vs. Coastal Carolina, 2 p.m. | Video
No. 25 Brown @ San Francisco, 5 p.m.

All times Eastern
Live Stats where available

No. 1 Akron vs. Bowling Green, 7:30 p.m. | Live Stats
No. 6 Wake Forest vs. No. 8 Harvard | Live Stats
No. 11 Virgina vs. Clemson, 7 p.m.
No. 14 Dartmouth @ Hartwick, 7 p.m.
No. 19 Boston University @ Rhode Island, 7 p.m. | Live Stats

Top-25 Results from Friday, Sept. 25

A wild Friday saw only two teams in the top-10 win, and one came by default, as No. 4 Maryland beat No. 2 North Carolina with an 89th-minute goal in a big ACC clash between top-5 teams. Meanwhile, four top-10 teams in action took losses to teams outside the top-25.

No. 2 North Carolina lost to No. 4 Maryland, 1-0
No. 3 South Florida lost to West Virginia, 1-0 in OT
No. 4 Maryland beat No. 2 North Carolina, 1-0
No. 5 California lost to New Mexico, 2-1
No. 7 UCSB lost to San Diego State, 4-2
No. 9 Louisville lost to Notre Dame, 4-0
No. 10 UCLA beat San Diego, 2-1
No. 12 Duke lost to Boston College, 2-0
No. 13 Indiana beat Wisconsin, 1-0
No. 17 Creighton beat Washington, 1-0
No. 18 St. John's (N.Y.) lost to Connecticut, 1-0
No. 23 UC Irvine beat Princeton, 2-1
No. 24 Cal St. Northridge tied Denver, 0-0
No. 25 Brown tied Santa Clara, 1-1

Maryland's Kevin Tangney celebrates his goal while UNC players look on during Maryland's 1-0 win over the Tar Heels on Friday night.

Friday wasn't supposed to be a big night outside of College Park, Maryland, where Maryland took on North Carolina. It was, with four wins by unranked teams over clubs in the top-10 and big finishes all across the country, massive.

In front of a Maryland-record crowd of 6,946 at College Park, the hosts took down No. 2 UNC, 1-0, in a rematch of last year's national championship pairing. The lone goal came off the foot of Maryland captain and defender Kevin Tangney, profiled this week by NCAA.com.

Meanwhile, No. 9 Louisville was blown out by Big EAST rival Notre Dame, 4-0. The Irish, after plummeting out of the top-25, struck back with four second-half goals to drop the Cardinals.

Third-ranked South Florida took its first loss of the season, falling 1-0 to West Virginia in Morgantown. A faulty clear by USF gave the ball to West Virginia's Alex Silva, who delivered a pass to Abel Sebele, who in turn slid a shot past Jeff Attinella to send the Mountaineers to the win.

But there's more. A lot more.

On the West Coast, the opening game of the Stanford Nike Classic wasn't kind to fellow Bay Area team California, as the fifth-ranked Bears took a 2-1 loss to New Mexico.

Just down the coast, No. 7 UCSB stumbled against SoCal rival San Diego State, falling, 4-2. SDSU junior Raymundo Reza led the way with two goals and an assist in the win.

Back in the East, Connecticut made a big statement in the Big EAST, knocking off No. 18 St. John's (N.Y.), 1-0. Kwame Watson-Siriboe tallied the game-winner in the 40th minute to lead UConn.

Stay tuned for more on Saturday!

Tidbits from around the country, teed-up just for you.

• The U.S. Under-20 Men's National team -- featuring eight NCAA players -- opens up the 2009 FIFA U-20 World Cup in Cairo with a match against Germany at 10 a.m. (ET) on Saturday. For the full release from USA Soccer, click here!
  
  
• Michigan State goalkeeper Avery Steinlage's NCAA-record scoreless streak ended last Sunday, when the Spartans took a 2-0 loss against San Diego. The run ended at 1,318:26 minutes, smashing the previous mark of 974:20, set by Milos Kocic of Loyola (MD) last season. For a profile of Steinlage click here, or here for a podcast with the MSU goalie. MSU opens Big 10 play against rival Ohio State on Sunday.
  

  UMBC's Andrew Bulls

  
  
• Two UMBC players sit in the top-3 nationwide in points per game, with
  Andrew Bulls posting seven goals and nine
  assists for 23 total points (at a clip of 3.29 ppg), with Levi Houapeu close behind, with 8-6-22 (3.14 per contest). In the middle? Harvard's All-Everything forward Andre Akpan, at 6-4-16 through five matches (3.20 a game).
  
  
• Boston College has won three straight after starting the season at 1-3, with the Eagles charging over Fairfield, then-No. 14 Boston University and Hartford over the past week. This weekend, BC hosts ACC rival and No. 12 Duke, with the Blue Devils fresh off a win over UNC Wilmington during the week. Duke's surprised a ton of people across the country this year, but don't count BC out yet, as the Eagles seem to be hitting their stride and getting ready to enter the mix in arguably the best conference in D-I Men's Soccer.
  
  
• Marshall ended Kentucky's longest unbeaten streak in school history last Sunday, ending the run at 15 games with the Wildcats' first loss of the year.
  
  
• ESPN Soccernet's Maria Burns-Ortiz profiled USF's Zak Boggs this week, showing the world the tremendously awesome talents of the M.A.C. Hermann Watch Lister, the 4.0 student, the possible Rhodes Scholar, the Eagle Scout, the black belt, the marbles champ and the champion jump-roper. Great stuff.
  

 

No. 2 North Carolina (5-0-1, 2-0-0 ACC) vs. No. 4 Maryland (4-1-1, 1-0-1 ACC)
Friday, 8 p.m. (ET) - College Park, Md. | Fox Soccer Channel
In a rematch of last year's national championship combatants, the stakes are high. Both teams currently occupy the top two spots in an ACC that doesn't forgive any losses. For Maryland, the Terps are a team looking to find a way to re-ignite its offense, while for UNC, the Tar Heels are looking to avenge three losses to Maryland last year and earn its first win over the Terps since 2003.

Maryland started slow last year. The Terps haven't crawled this year, per se, but they've had trouble lighting up the scoreboard. Only once in Maryland's six games have the Terps scored more than two goals, when they plastered 7 on Duquesne on Sept. 15. They've put up only two, total, in the last two games, tying N.C. State last Saturday and just clipping St. Peter's, 1-0, on Tuesday.

For North Carolina, a win on Friday would give the Tar Heels their first 3-0 ACC start since 1968. But it hasn't been all smooth sailing for North Carolina, who just escaped a matchup with unranked ETSU with a 2-1 OT win on Tuesday after two straight 2-1 wins over N.C. State and Duke, respectively.

Ludwig Field set a Maryland men's soccer attendance record when the Terps opened with UCLA at home. Expect this crowd to make that one look like it was cheering for a chem lecture.

No. 8 Harvard (6-0) @ No. 6 Wake Forest (4-1-1)
Saturday, 7 p.m. - Winston-Salem, N.C.
Segueing from chem lectures...Harvard is undefeated. That's right. The Crimson started the year among the unranked, but wins over in-town rivals Boston College and Boston University, among others, have vaulted the Crimson to their highest ranking ever (No. 6 in the Soccer America poll), tied with the 2007 team.

And it's not just the wins that have gotten them there. This team can score. A lot. Andre Akpan hasn't slowed at all from his record-setting pace through three years in Cambridge, racking up a team-best six goals and four assists for 16 points (second in the nation in ppg, at 3.2), and Brian Rogers (11 points) has followed close behind. Plus, Austin Harms is pretty good in net, posting three shutouts, a .35 GAA and a .913 save percentage.

They'll be taking on a Wake Forest team that's hungry, after a loss to Virginia last weekend, but one that will be without arguably its top player, with reigning ACC Defender of the Year Ike Opara playing for the U-20 National Team in the FIFA U-20 World Cup. [LINK http://wakeforestsports.cstv.com/sports/m-soccer/spec-rel/092409aaa.html]

The Deacons, who roared through the regular season last year, still look to be a good way away from clicking, but the talent is certainly there. Look for a team playing a little shorthanded to rise up and defend its home against a Harvard club that will be looking to exploit a defense without its central cog.

No. 23 UC Irvine (5-2) @ No. 7 UC Santa Barbara (5-1-1)
Sunday, 9:30 p.m. - Santa Barbara, Calif.
Both of these Southern California powers open up Big West play on Sunday, when the Anteaters travel to Santa Barbara to clash with the Gauchos. And while Irvine's looking to stay ranked, UCSB's looking to dig into the top-10 after a week that saw the Gauchos down Milwaukee, then come back late to tie Wisonsin, 1-1, at the Milwaukee Panther Classic.

For UCI, look to Amani Walker (4g, 2a - 10 pts) to lead the way for the offense, while goalkeeper Andrew Fontein's brandishing an 0.95 GAA and four shutouts. Meanwhile, UCSB, the 13th-ranked offense in the country at 2.43 goals per game, have gotten 112 points from Michael Nonni, while Sam Hayden's posted an 0.95 GA and three shutsouts in net.

But to get there, Irvine has to get past Princeton on Friday, with UCSB matching up with San Diego State on the same night - both tough, tough draws.

UNDEFEATEDS
-    Akron looks to keep its perfect 6-0-0 record alive against Bowling Green on Saturday.
-    For as-yet-unranked UMBC, the Retrievers bring their 7-0-0 record to La Salle on Saturday.
-    Monmouth and its 6-0-0 mark meet up with Loyola (Md.) on Saturday.
-    Finally, 6-0-0 Stetson brings its perfect ledger to the Jacksonville/Nike Invitational, where it'll play the College of Charleston - just five votes out of the top-25 - on Friday and Alabama A&M on Sunday.

Duke's twin brothers, Dan and Chris Tweed-Kent, weren't recruited by anybody. Coming out of Pittsfield, Mass., the pair figured they might as well try out for the Blue Devil men's soccer team. Today, they're fixtures in a lineup that's surprised the country. Listen to their story here.

One of the two captains on the Maryland men's soccer team had only three college starts to his name coming into this year. Yet, after two devastating injuries, Kevin Tangney's become the inspiration for a Maryland team out to defend its second national championship in four years.

On Aug. 8, 2007, a group of Maryland men's soccer players got together for a 7-on-7 pickup game in the days leading up to the official start of preseason. Two years removed from the 2005 national championship run but primed with talent groomed through 2006, a feeling of optimism blew through College Park.

In their midst was a redshirt sophomore, Kevin Tangney, who had found his way onto the field after an entire season off of it. Tangney had missed all of 2006 with an ACL tear, suffered while in France for a regional team competition. But he'd rehabbed and thought, in some ways, he was better than before. Stronger. Faster.

He was the second generation of Terps in his family, after his mom, Joanne, came before him -- he was a kid, who, in the words of coach Sasho Cirovski, "breathes Maryland." When Tangney first visited College Park in 2004, he committed on the spot.

And now he ran on a field just 20 yards from his mom's old dorm with a dozen of his best friends, feeling the grass buckle beneath his feet and moving, circling, gliding along the pitch in a way he hadn't since before his leg first failed him in June of 2006.

Then, just four days before his first preseason since shredding the central fibers in his left knee, he planted to make a cut in open space and fell to the ground.