After tying Denver in its first conference home game, the Eastern men’s soccer team heads back on the road with a Summit League matchup against IUPUI at 11 a.m. Saturday.

Coached by Isang Jacob, IUPUI is currently 2-5-1 and 0-1 in the Summit League after a 4-0 loss to Fort Wayne on Sept. 27.

Eastern is trailing IUPUI in the all time series 3-4-3. The two teams tied 1-1 last year and that was the only conference tie Eastern had all year. IUPUI went 2-12-5 last season, with a 2-2-2 record against the Summit League.

IUPUI had a losing record at home last season going 2-3-2, but is currently 1-1 at home so far this year.

Eastern head coach Mark Hansen said his team is similar to the Jaguars.

“They’re a young team, much like ourselves, they are very young, a lot of freshmen, sophomores and juniors play,” he said. “Coach Jacobs runs a very good program from top to bottom. They’re going to be competitive, they’re going to be athletic and they definitely play better at home. So we’re expecting to get their best effort.”

Freshman forward Emmanuel Usen is the leading scorer on IUPUI with four goals and eight points. He has started in all eight games so far this year. Sophomore Christian Lomeli and Junior Eduardo Cortes have both had time at goalkeeper and have each given up nine goals.

Hansen has freshman goalkeeper Mike Novotny as the clear starter for Eastern at goalkeeper.

“At this point Mike has done everything we’ve asked of him,” Hansen said. “I would put him up there as one of the top goalkeepers in our league and I think it was unfortunate that he didn’t get recognized by the Summit conference this week. I think his performance was one that was probably the best in the league considering who we played, so that was disappointing that the league did not recognize his efforts.”

Hansen is also pleased with the defensive play of Eastern.

“The biggest thing is that the last three games we’ve conceded one goal or less,” he said. “When you do that you’re going to be giving yourself a chance to win games. When you’re only conceding one you give yourself the opportunity to eventually tie it like we did on Saturday and give yourself a chance to win it like we did with the shot off the post.”

After earning one point in two conference games, Hansen said the Panthers have a good chance of making the conference tournament.

“I think we are in the position that if we take care of our business going forward we should have a very good chance of making it, but by no means is anything guaranteed until the last game of the year,” he said.

Sophomore Jack Patrick has been cleared to play Hansen said and he may be eligible to make both trips to IUPUI and Bradley on Saturday and Monday.

Hansen plans to maintain the same gameplan on the road.

“Our gameplan is to be ourselves game in and game out and to dictate the way we want to play,” he said. “I think we did a great job of that for 90 minutes on Saturday, it was probably the first time for 90 minutes we dictated the game. “

Mark Shanahan can be reached at 581-2812 or [email protected].