By: Owen James, Training Coordinator, FM88 Sports<\/p>\n
HUNTINGTON, W.Va. (WMUL-FM) \u2014 No. 14 Marshall men\u2019s soccer (10-2-4, 6-1-2 SBC) plays host to No. 7 seeded Kentucky (3-9-4, 3-4-2 SBC), kicking off Sun Belt Tournament play.<\/p>\n
Kickoff is slated for 3 p.m. at Hoop Family Field. The Thundering Herd clinched the Sun Belt Conference Regular Season Championship and the No. 2 seed in the SBC tournament on Tuesday, in a 3-0 victory over Old Dominion. Carl Romberg scored the first two goals in the contest at 24:13 and 57:16, and Luka Lukic scored the dagger at 83:43 for his first goal of the season.<\/p>\n
“I mean it was fantastic. We executed the game plan,” Marshall men\u2019s soccer head coach Chris Grassie said. “They’re a good team, well coached and they have their own style, introduced a lot of chaos into the game. I thought we handled those moments well, and then just got down and played.”<\/p>\n
The Wildcats closed out the 2026 regular season on Tuesday in 3-1 victory on the road against Georgia State. Bains Smith opened scoring early, followed by a Costa Iliadis goal in the 35th minute. Cianole Nguepissi finished a cross from former Thundering Herd Yasha Scharer to give his team a commanding 3-0 lead in the 80th minute.<\/p>\n
The player to watch for Marshall is senior forward Carl Romberg. The Germany native scored twice to close out the year for the Herd and will look to find opportunities for himself and teammates on the Wildcats goal. Romberg\u2019s six goals and 17 points lead Marshall and place him 7th in the Sun Belt Conference in points.<\/p>\n
The player to watch for Kentucky is Costas Illiadis. The freshman forward leads his team in goals and assists, with three apiece. He scored in the Wildcats\u2019 contest against Georgia Southern and is the engine of an offense that often struggles to get going.<\/p>\n
Fans can catch the action on ESPN+, or tune into WMUL-FM’s coverage of the contest. Owen James and Max Chaffin will be on the call, with pregame coverage beginning at 2:45 p.m. before the 3 p.m. kickoff.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
By: Owen James, Training Coordinator, FM88 Sports HUNTINGTON, W.Va. (WMUL-FM) \u2014 No. 14 Marshall men\u2019s soccer (10-2-4, 6-1-2 SBC) plays host to No. 7 seeded Kentucky (3-9-4, 3-4-2 SBC), kicking off Sun Belt Tournament play. Kickoff is slated for 3 p.m. at Hoop Family Field. The Thundering Herd clinched the Sun Belt Conference Regular Season<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1101,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1192,1829,5],"tags":[115,100,111,69,330,28,138,1061,1828,251,236,212,332],"class_list":["post-5489","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles","category-mens-soccer","category-wmul-sports","tag-college-radio","tag-fm88-sports","tag-hoops-family-field","tag-huntington-wv","tag-marshall-soccer","tag-marshall-university","tag-marshall-university-athletics","tag-owen-james","tag-owen-james-fm88-sports","tag-sbc","tag-sun-belt-conference","tag-thundering-herd-athletics","tag-thundering-herd-soccer"],"acf":[],"fimg_url":false,"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.marshall.edu\/wmul\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5489","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.marshall.edu\/wmul\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.marshall.edu\/wmul\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.marshall.edu\/wmul\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1101"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.marshall.edu\/wmul\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5489"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.marshall.edu\/wmul\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5489\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5490,"href":"https:\/\/www.marshall.edu\/wmul\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5489\/revisions\/5490"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.marshall.edu\/wmul\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5489"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.marshall.edu\/wmul\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5489"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.marshall.edu\/wmul\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5489"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}