Photo: Jack Bradshaw
By Jackson Shoe | @jackson.shoe
South Carolina and Old Dominion have spent the opening weeks of the 2026 season building momentum.
On Friday night in Norfolk, one of those perfect starts will end.
Both teams enter their Sun Belt opener unbeaten, but they have reached that point in different ways. South Carolina has leaned on balance, defensive improvement and a run of ranked wins. Old Dominion has produced one of the more dramatic offensive turnarounds in the country.
South Carolina’s résume is the more tested of the two.
The Gamecocks have already beaten three ranked opponents, defeating No. 16 Clemson 3-2, No. 25 Charlotte 2-1, and No. 14 High Point 2-0.
The Clemson win came in front of a program-record crowd of 7,671. South Carolina then went on the road and beat Charlotte behind five saves from goalkeeper Noah Scheidweiler before controlling High Point in a 2-0 victory while the Panthers were down a man.
A 1-0 win over UNCG pushed the Gamecocks to 6-0.
South Carolina has scored 16 goals through six matches while allowing only four. Angel Lopez leads the team with three goals and three assists. Mika Habel has two goals and four assists, Alejandro Velazquez-Lopez has three goals and two assists, and Loïc Sany Kong has three goals and an assist.
That production has helped replace significant losses from last season.
Ethan Ballek and Tyler Trimmal combined for 12 of South Carolina’s 26 goals in 2025, but neither is on the 2026 roster.
Rather than replacing that scoring with one player, South Carolina has spread it across several contributors.
Velazquez-Lopez has already matched his full 2025 totals of three goals and two assists. Habel has already matched his eight points from last season. Sany Kong has surpassed his 2025 goal total through six matches. The larger change may be on the defensive end. South Carolina allowed 34 goals in 18 matches last season. Through six games this year, the Gamecocks have conceded only four.
That improvement has allowed South Carolina to win in different ways. The Gamecocks scored four goals in each of their first two matches, but they have also shown they can manage tighter games against better competition.
Old Dominion improvement has been even more dramatic offensively.
The Monarchs scored 21 goals in 17 matches in 2025. They have already scored 25 through six games this season. ODU opened with a 3-1 win at George Washington, then beat Elon 5-3 and Lehigh 2-0 to start 3-0 for the first time since 2012.
The Monarchs then overwhelmed Radford 7-1, shut out Bucknell 3-0 and beat UMBC 5-1. On Monday, they tallied their seventh win of the season with a 2-1 victory over VCU.
Old Dominion is averaging more than four goals per game and has outshot opponents 105-61. The Monarchs also hold a 62-24 advantage in shots on goal, a reflection of just how consistently they have created chances.
Lewis Rourke has led the attack with six goals and three assists for 15 points. His emergence is one of the clearest signs of how much ODU has changed.
Rourke was on Old Dominion’s 2025 roster but did not appear in the season’s cumulative statistics. Six games into 2026, he is the Monarchs’ leading scorer.
Jason Purks has added four goals and three assists, while David Chapman has three goals and two assists. Ludovico Vicini has one goal and three assists, and Noah Dietze and Mile Zivkovic have scored twice each.
Purks was especially important in the 5-3 win over Elon.
Old Dominion scored just 61 seconds into the match, then allowed Elon to take a 2-1 lead with two goals in a span of 80 seconds. The Monarchs responded quickly.
Dietze tied the match, Purks scored before halftime and then added another early in the second half. Miguel Menendez later finished the scoring. ODU outshot Elon 16-8 and put nine shots on goal.
That game showed the Monarchs’ ability to answer when pushed, but their start has not been built only on shootouts.
Old Dominion shut out Lehigh and Bucknell and has allowed only six goals through six games after conceding 23 in 17 matches last season.
That sets up a conference opener between two teams with the same record but different profiles.
South Carolina has built its 6-0 start around balance, defensive consistency and a résumé that already includes three ranked wins.
Old Dominion has built its 7-0 start around an attack that has already surpassed last season’s goal total and a group of contributors who have dramatically changed the team’s production. The contrast is clear in the numbers.
South Carolina has 16 goals and four allowed.
Old Dominion has 27 goals and seven allowed. both teams have also improved sharply from a year ago.
South Carolina scored 26 goals and allowed 34 in 2025. Old Dominion scored 21 and allowed 23. Now both enter conference play unbeaten.
Friday’s meeting at Old Dominion Soccer Complex will be the first Sun Belt match for each team, but it will also be the first time either side faces another program carrying the same kind of early-season momentum.
South Carolina has already shown it can win against ranked opponents and protect narrow leads.
Old Dominion has shown it can overwhelm teams offensively while also finding ways to win lower-scoring matches.
The result will not define either season, but after perfect starts, it will provide the first conference test for two teams that look considerably different from the ones that finished 2025.
Can one of them leave Norfolk unscathed?
