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SMU's Matt Wideman earns fourth straight C-USA Defensive Player of the Week honors

Senior goalkeeper totals seven shutouts

Sept. 25, 2006

DALLAS (SMU) - For the fourth consecutive week, SMU senior goalkeeper Matt Wideman has been selected as this week's Conference USA Defensive Player of the Week as announced by the league on Monday. He helped SMU record two road victories over the weekend.

Wideman was stellar in goal again this past weekend, posting his seventh shutout of the season with a brilliant 3-0 victory over #20 Saint Louis on the road. He made a total of sevens saves this past weekend. Wideman has allowed only three goals in 11 games (938 total minutes) for a GAA of 0.29 and a save percentage of .917.

In last week's national stats, he was second in the nation in GAA and third
in save percentage.

PonyPride,
Is it me or do you think C-USA men's soccer, outside of Tulsa, is pretty weak, and we have to play a rigorous non-conference schedule (we always have) to be ready for the NCAA tournament?

Not true. Tulsa's decent, but not great, by any stretch. However, Conference USA is actually a very good soccer conference. As of last week, South Carolina (affiliate member for soccer), Memphis and UAB were ranked. Kentucky (another affiliate member) isn't ranked at the moment (new ranking comes out tomorrow), but is a solid team and a highly respected program. Central Florida, coached by Schellas Hyndman protoge Brent Erwin, is undergoing an overhaul of sorts, but is viewed as a program that will improve rapidly. Some of the other schools have pretty modest (weak) programs, but overall, Conference USA is a very good soccer conference.

I just wanted to be sure. You are Mr. Soccer. In other words, the conference regular season title we won in 2005 was well earned?

Conference USA, although not the top soccer conference in terms of strength of teams, is nonetheless a very strong conference. One reason SMU always plays a hard non-conference schedule is that strength of schedule is a factor in NCAA bids where you are not the automatic qualifier. This has gotten SMU into the tournament in the past.

to say c-usa soccer is weak is totally not true. maybe in womens but certainly not in mens soccer. besides us being a top three team in the country the teams that come to mind that are also solid are pretty much everyone. south carolina, uab, memphis have all been ranked at one point or another just in this past year. kentucky is always a pesky test and fiu made a nice run in the ncaa tourney a couple years ago. i'd say we have a conference of good competition but it's definitely safe to say we are the most feared to play and most presitigious program

Wideman has been amazing this year. Sometimes a keeper's numbers get skewed when he plays behind a terrific defense, and Wideman has enjoyed the benefits of playing behind Mynor Gonzalez, Jay Needham, Ryan Mirsky and Daniel Lopez -- a stout foursome, to be sure. But I have been to every home game this year (including the two at UT-D), and he has made sensational saves in each and every game. I've never seen a keeper who's better at diving one direction, only to twist back another direction after the shot's been deflected and tipping the ball over the goal. He has been an absolute savior (no pun intended) this year.