The Gulf South Conference kicks off its 2021 men's soccer championship this weekend, with the top eight teams from the conference jostling for a chance to head to Pensacola, Florida, on Nov. 14 and play in the final.

The Colonial Athletic Association women's soccer championship starts Thursday, Nov. 4, and it would appear all signs point to an eventual clash of conference heavyweights.

In the COVID-19-shortened spring 2021 season, the Big East's sole representative in the NCAA tournament was conference champion Georgetown. Make of that what you will, but ahead of the fall conference season, the Big East looks poised to send more than one squad to the Big Dance this November.

For the last four years, the Big East men's soccer conversation has been dominated by one team. The Georgetown Hoyas have had commanded the Big East since 2017. Despite ceding the conference crown to Seton Hall during the COVID-19-shortened spring 2021 season, the Hoyas are primed to continue their dominance in the fall of 2021. The Big East is far from a one-pony show, though; the conference in its entirety boasts challengers aplenty to the Hoyas' supremacy.

As if he’d not made enough of an impression since joining AS Roma on loan from Manchester United in the summer, defender Chris Smalling really stood out as an exceptional talent on the week of his 30th birthday. 

By Jerry Beach Simon Riddiough, the head coach of the Hofstra women’s soccer team, spent about two minutes of a 21-minute interview Tuesday afternoon discussing why he’s content at the Long Island school and not planning to see if he can replicate his success with a higher-profile Power Five school that would offer the resources and opportunities to make a deep NCAA Tournament run that are generally lacking in the mid-major arena.

It’s hard to believe that only as far back as April 22, 2018, Napoli beat Juventus 1-0 in Turin to move top of the table with only four games remaining. Maurizio Sarri — himself now in charge at Juve — had broken the club record points total in each of the previous two campaigns, and would do so again in 2017-18, but the Naples men ultimately finished second, albeit with yet another unseen total of 91 points.

This is the moment of truth for Canada's men's national team.