Cicerone’s 13th seals Senior Day win, undefeated home season

UB Men’s Soccer saw off its seniors with a rare-for-them October nonconference match today against Oral Roberts, and senior Russell Cicerone helped send off the 2016 Bulls with the program’s first undefeated home record since 2008.

Cicerone converted the last touch of a free kick that found its way thirty yards from Daniel Cramarossa’s foot to Fox Slotemaker’s head, nodding it in over the ORU keeper early in the match to give UB the lead.

Here and there the Bulls had high-quality chances, and more infrequently Joe Kuta needed to make a save, but for the most part Buffalo had the slightly better of a meh game, most exciting for the histrionics coming from a variety of Golden Eagles players and coaches. UB outshot Oral Roberts 14-9 and had a 6-3 advantage in corner kicks while the visitors committed 14 fouls to Buffalo’s 3.

The goal is Cicerone’s 13th of the year, a new career high for the senior, who is first or second in each career offensive stat at UB.

The Bulls have one regular season match remaining. Following Saturday MAC results, they’ve clinched a second consecutive postseason berth, but seedings are entirely up in the air, other than that West Virginia and Northern Illinois are out. With a win over Bowling Green on the road this coming weekend, UB would claim at least a share of the MAC Regular Season Championship and at least the #2 seed in the MAC Tournament. A better result against the Falcons than Akron manages against Western Michigan would give the Bulls the outright regular season championship and #1 seed.

I’ll have more in the way of seeding scenarios tomorrow.