KANSAS CITY, Mo. --- Just 24 hours after earning his first career weekly honor, senior Tyler Mitchell added another to his resume as he was named NAIA Men's Soccer National Defensive Player of the Week Tuesday.
Mitchell was named GSAC Defensive Player of the Week Monday and then earned the national honor being selected out of a pool of conference/independent/unaffiliated players of the week from among 23 conferences/independent/unaffiliated groupings.
Mitchell is the second Lancer this year to earn national weekly honors, joining Tiburcio Casillas. He is just the third Lancer ever to earn national weekly honors.
After
having just six conference players of the week in the last decade, Mitchell became the fifth this year, all in successive weeks. It is the third straight week the award was won on the defensive
end. Jeff Redinger earned it two weeks ago. Tyler Aagard won it last week.
The seventh-ranked Lancers began the week in a three-way tie atop the GSAC table with both Vanguard and Fresno Pacific. They ended the week with sole possession of first place for the first time in program history, and they did it with stifling defense in a pair of shutout wins over both those teams.
Mitchell, a team captain and center back, spearheaded the Lancers' defensive effort as they notched two impressive shutouts over two of the top five scoring teams in the GSAC and ran their shutout streak to a program-record tying four straight games and 442 consecutive minutes. He also scored his first career goal.
In the Lancers' 1-0 win over No. 5 Vanguard, Mitchell and the Lancers' limited the Lions, the GSAC's second-highest scoring team, to a measly seven shots. It was the first time this year the Lions were kept off the scoreboard.
Then, in Saturday's 2-0 win at Fresno Pacific, Mitchell put the game on ice with a goal in the 73rd minute, heading in a rebounded shot off a corner kick.
The Lancers haven't been scored upon since the eighth minute of their 2-1 win over Westmont in the GSAC opener Sept. 25 at home.
CBU puts its program-record nine-game winning streak on the line Wednesday when it hosts Point Loma Nazarene at 3 p.m. The Lancers then battle No. 12 Azusa Pacific Saturday at 2:30 p.m.
