Men
As the men’s 2012 season got underway it was Maryland who struck with the first big win of the campaign. The Terps shutout Louisville, 3-0, and exacted some revenge against the Cardinals, who knocked Maryland out of last season’s NCAA Tournament in the 3rd round. The Terps scored in the 9th and 30th minute, and then added a late goal in the 2nd half to seal the win.

#4 UC Santa Barbara escaped with a season opening win over Loyola Marymount, scoring off a header with just over a minute to play for a 2-1 win. #9 Indiana shut down Cincinnati, 3-0, and Dayton finished the weekend 2-0 with a thrilling 4-3 win over Kentucky. In other games of note, St. Louis topped Drake, 1-0, and Virginia Tech beat Richmond by the same score.

A little closer to home, #13 St. John’s needed a Jelani Wiliams goal on a give-and-go in the final minutes of regulation to come away with a 1-1 tie against defending Patriot League champion Colgate. Redshirt junior Jimmy Mulligan of Patchogue-Medford did a good job of creating chances early on in a 2nd half that saw the Red Storm take an 11-2 advantage in shots and a 7-0 advantage on corners. Hicksville’s Tim Parker also had a great header that was blocked.

Fordham opened their season with a 1-0 win over Adelphi, and Iona fell to UC Riverside by the same score.

Women
For the second straight week, upsets led the headlines in the world of women’s soccer. This weekend, #1 Duke and #2 Stanford both lost. Florida scored five minutes into overtime to top the Blue Devils and overcome a two-goal deficit in the 1st half. This is the third straight time these teams have played to a tie in regulation, and was a nice revenge win for a Gators team that saw the Dukies knocked them out of last year’s NCAA Tournament on penalty kicks.

For the Cardinal, their 1-0 loss to unranked West Virginia at the Penn State Invitational ended a 25-game win streak. The Mountaineers scored in the 83rd minute to pull off the upset.

The beneficiary of all this could be No. 3 UCLA, who improved to 3-0-0 with a 2-0 win over No. 24 Illinois. No. 6 Oklahoma State scored four unanswered goals to top Creighton, 4-1 and move to 4-0 on the season. The Washington Huskies soccer teams are a combined 5-0 as the girls topped Syracuse, 2-1 to move to 3-0, their best start since 2005. Georgetown is also undefeated, topping Hofstra, 2-1. The Pride had beaten Temple on Saturday on goals by East Meadow’s Lulu Echeverry and freshman Jill Mulholland of Levittown.

In other local action, Rutgers outshot Siena 26-1, but needed an own goal by the Saints to pick up a 1-0 win.

Oceanside’s Ashley Castanio shut out St. John’s in Stony Brook’s 3-0 win. It was the first career shutout for Castanio.