SANTA CLARA, Calif. - Santa Clara men's soccer's 2023 season officially came to a close with last weekend's West Coast Conference Co-Championship clinching victory over Pacific serving as the final game of the season.  On Monday, the Broncos found out they did not receive an at-large berth to the NCAA Tournament.
 
The Broncos defeated the Tigers 2-1 on Saturday night on Joshua Dabora's 88^th minute game-winning goal to clinch the conference crown along with San Diego.  However, the Toreros got the automatic qualifying bid due to their head-to-head win against Santa Clara for the tiebreaker advantage. 
 
"Overall, it's tough when you get to selection day and your name is not up there when you have hopes," said Broncos head coach Cam Rast.  "But we knew our hopes were slim so we were realistic but you're always hopeful that your body of work would carry you through.  We had a strong second half of the season and beat two teams that made it to the tournament. Everybody wants to play a little more and unfortunately that wasn't in the cards this year." 
 
Portland and LMU along with San Diego will represent the WCC in the 48-team NCAA Tournament largely due to the strength of their RPI rankings at 10th and 23rd, respectively.  The Broncos finished 79th.
 
"In our nonconference schedule, we played Georgetown, Oregon State and Stanford, all top-25 teams that made it to the tournament, so we had some good challenges.  They were win-able games but we just didn't play as well as we needed to.  That dropped our RPI too low to be really considered for the tournament selection without winning our conference outright," said Rast.   
 
Santa Clara closed out the regular season with six wins in their last nine games including 5-1-1 in league action to claim their 14^th conference title in program history. 
 
SCU's challenging schedule included playing six teams (out of 17 total games) that qualified for the 2023 NCAA Tournament, defeating two of them – shutting out a high-powered Portland squad 1-0 that entered the game leading the nation in scoring and also blanking LMU 2-0 on the road. 
 
Along with the team's success came individual recognitions that saw senior midfielder Adem Hamdaoua and junior goalkeeper Jack Stoecker earn WCC Offensive and Defensive Player of the Week honors twice each. 
 
In league play, Hamdaoua led all players in points (11) and game-winning goals (3).  He also tied for first in goals (4) and tied for second in assists (3). 
 
Stoecker topped the conference in save percentage (.833) during WCC action and finished second with a .857 goals-against-average and 4.29 saves per game. 
 
While eight seniors were recognized on Senior Night, all 10 newcomers started at least one game and eight of them played at least 10 games, setting a  strong foundation for next season. 
 
"The tournament selection was earlier today and the coaching staff is already talking about what we need to recruit," said Rast.  "We will get on the road recruiting starting tomorrow and the transfer portal will open.  So we are looking forward to continuing to build on what we think we are doing right and see if we can make it even better next year."

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