PORTALES, N.M. – The Eastern New Mexico men's soccer team will host its final regular season home games with enormous Heartland Conference Tournament implications as the Hounds will take on Lubbock Christian at 7 p.m. Thursday night for the Heartland Conference West Division Championship and then face No. 15 West Texas A&M on Saturday at 1 p.m.

LAST TIME OUT
Eastern picked up a couple of important victories at home last week, defeating Dallas Baptist at 3-0 on Thursday before coming away with a 2-1 victory at home against St. Edward's.

In the DBU match, junior midfielder Gabriel Peres put the Hounds up in the 44^th minute with his sixth goal of the season, making it 1-nil going into the halftime break. Sophomore midfielder Lucas Vaz notched his fourth goal of the season at the 62:15 mark in the second half with a long shot that found the pack of the net, put the Hounds up by two. Eastern added one more for good measure in the 87^th minute as freshman defender Caio Pereira scored his first goal of the season from 16-yards out to seal the 3-0 victory.

Against St. Edward's on Saturday, the Hounds had to string together a rally after conceding the first goal of the match. After a foul was called inside the box on the Hilltoppers with three seconds remaining in the first half, Marvin Lewin's free kick pass found a wide open Julian Trapp on the right side of the goal and his shot from five yards out found the back of the net before time expired, tying the match at 1-all heading into the half. Trapp scored his second goal of the match, a game-winner, in the 60^th minute when freshman forward Aderi Arthur-Dede found Trapp on a touch pass and he beat the defense to fire in a wide open shot from five yards out from the right side.

SCOUTING THE CHAPS
Lubbock Christian enters the match with a 7-5-2 record overall and are 5-4-3 in Heartland Conference play. The Chaps are currently tied with the Hounds at the top of the HC West standings as each team holds a 2-0-2 record in divisional play.

LCU is coming off a pair of losses last week, dropping a 1-0 decision in double overtime at Texas A&M-International on Thursday before falling at St. Mary's 2-1 on Saturday.

Coming into the match, the Chaps rank third in the conference in goals against average, giving up just one a game and are sixth in scoring offense, averaging 1.73 per match.

Lubbock Christian has a balanced offense that features five guys who have scored three or more goals this season, led by Louis Callaghan and Tariq Bakkali with four goals apiece. On the defensive end, the Chaps feature one of the top goalkeepers in the Heartland in Braxton Thorne, ranking second in the conference with a .817 save percentage and third with a .939 goals allowed average.
 
HISTORY WITH THE CHAPS
Eastern leads the all-time series against Lubbock Christian with a 6-3-4 record since their rivalry began in 2010.

In their previous meeting back on Sept. 15 in Lubbock, the Hounds scored the first goal of the match in the 31^st minute off Joao Gabriel Andrade's first goal of the season. The Chaps knotted the match up in the 52^nd minute, but the Hounds would not allow another shot on-goal throughout the remainder of the double overtime match as it ended in a 1-all draw.

Eastern will be seeking a similar result as last year's match in Portales. In the last home match of the season on Oct. 26, 2017, the Hounds were victorious after pitching a 2-nil shutout.
 
SCOUTING THE BUFFS
West Texas A&M comes into the week as the 15th-ranked team in NCAA Division II with a 12-2-2 overall record and a 9-2-1 mark in Heartland Conference play. The Buffs have struggled in divisional play as WTAMU possesses a 1-2-1 record in the West.

Since the Hounds and Buffs played to a tie back on Oct. 6, the Buffs have won four straight matches, including a 1-0 overtime win over No. 3 Midwestern State. Last week, West Texas picked up a 1-0 win over St. Edward's on Thursday before dealing a 6-0 defeat to Dallas Baptist on Saturday.

The Buffs feature one of the most prolific offenses in the nation, averaging 3.25 goals per match which ranks them at the top of the conference and sixth in NCAA Division II. Not only does West Texas feature a prolific offense, but the Buffs have the top scoring defenses in the league, conceding just 10 goals on a .63 goals allowed average.

The WTAMU offense features three of the top four goal scorers in the league, led by senior forward Julio Vargas. With 12 goals scored this season, Vargas ranks second in the HC and 17^th in the nation. Vargas also leads the team with seven assists, giving him 31 total points this season. Callum Challinor is their second-best goal scorer, notching the third-most goals in the conference with 10 while Lucca Lima is tied for fourth in the league with seven goals scored this season.

Since moving into the starting role, sophomore goalkeeper Alexander Vencel has been strong in the net for the Buffs. In 10 matches, Vencel owns an 8-1-1 record, giving up just five goals for the league's best .491 goals against average as well as leads the league with an .875 save percentage.

HISTORY WITH THE BUFFS
The Buffs lead the all-time series against the Hounds with a 19-2-4 record in the series that started in 2004.

In their last meeting on Oct. 6, Eastern overcame a 2-0 halftime deficit. In the 61^st minute, Gregory Franusic's shot bounced off the keeper's hands and off the post, trickling into the net for the Hounds first goal of the match. At the 80:40 mark, ENMU got the equalizer off the foot of Peres, sending the match into overtime. Neither of the team could score the game-winner in the overtime periods as the match ended in a 2-2 draw.

SENIOR RECOGNITION
Before the match on Saturday, the Hounds will be recognizing their three senior players, Jesus Garcia, Jose Tabares-Ochoa, and Brandon Bautista. In his two-year Greyhounds career, Garcia has scored three goals, his last one coming back on Sept. 29 against Texas A&M-International, as well as recorded three career assists. In his lone season with Eastern, Tabares-Ochoa has appeared in 11 matches and has made six starts. In those matches, he's picked up a pair of assists in back-to-back matches against Texas A&M-International and UT-Permian Basin. In his two years with Eastern, Bautista has appeared in 27 matches and has made 14 starts for the Hounds.

BATTLE FOR THE WEST
The two matches this week have enormous Heartland Conference Tournament implications. Since Eastern and Lubbock Christian have equal 2-0-2 records in West Division play, the winner of the match will earn the West Division title and will receive one of the three automatic bids to the conference tournament. If the match ends in a tie, it will come down to the results of the final matches on Saturday as the Hounds host West Texas A&M while the Chaps play at UT-Permian Basin. If both teams win, lose, or tie, it would come down to a goal differential tiebreaker.

IT'S A TRAPP!
In last Saturday's match against Dallas Baptist, Trapp became just the second Greyhound to score multiple goals in a match this season. Arthur-Dede was the other ENMU player to score multiple goals in a match, as he came away with a pair of scores in a 2-1 victory at Oklahoma Christian. Trapp was close to becoming the first Greyhounds player since 2015 to pull off a hat trick in a game, but his first shot in the first half hit just outside the right post. The last time a hat trick happened for the Hounds came on Oct. 31, 2015 when Ryan McManus scored three goals in a 4-1 victory over Southern Nazarene.

PLAYING FOR KEEPS
Coming off his most successful week as a member of the Greyhounds men's soccer team, sophomore goalkeeper Ross Dalton was named the Heartland Conference Defensive Player of the Week on Monday. In last week's matches, Dalton gave up just one goal and made five crucial saves in Eastern's two victories while also pitching his first complete match shutout of the season against the Hilltoppers. Currently, Dalton ranks fifth in the Heartland Conference, giving up just 1.250 goals per match.