South Orange, N.J. - Coming off a 1-0 road win at FIU last week, the Seton Hall men's soccer team entered the United Soccer Coaches Poll at No. 25 in the rankings released on Tuesday afternoon. The Pirates have now been nationally ranked at least once in four of the last five seasons; the team was last ranked on Sept. 5, 2023 at No. 23.

The Pirates are one of two BIG EAST teams in the current top-25, joining No. 16 Georgetown.

Seton Hall's road win at FIU last Thursday was a 1-0 shutout over the Panthers that featured the game-winning goal by junior Agustin Resch (Arata, Argentina) on a header and three saves from junior Matias Molina (Rosario, Argentina).

In head coach Andreas Lindberg's tenure, Seton Hall appeared in the United Soccer Coaches top-25 seven times during the truncated 2020 season, reaching as high as No. 6. Then Seton Hall spent four weeks in the national rankings during 2021.

No. 25 Seton Hall will face UAlbany in its home opener Thursday night at Owen T. Carroll Field at 6:56 p.m. The game is free to attend, and schedule posters will be given away while supplies last.

Part 3 of our interview with Tony Bozzella

Bozzella on the schedule​

TROVE: The non-conference schedule has been unveiled. What are you most looking forward to about this year's slate?

BOZZELLA: We have a lot of balance in it. I think we have a lot of teams that have won their conference or are at the top three of their conference. Obviously, when you look at it quickly, you see Princeton, a perennial NCAA team. You see a Big XII team on the road in Cincinnati that's going to be a very big challenge to us. And then obviously the two bears on the schedule: USC in Palm Springs, we're the feature game at 7:00 ET on Tru TV or TBS or TNT. I don't think you can get a better slot for a game. You know, the night before Thanksgiving at 7:00 everyone's home. It's a great game playing against one of the best players in the country in JuJu Watkins. And they asked us to play in the tournament. So it's great.

And then we were asked to play in the Mohegan Sun Hall of Fame classic. They were like 'you might have to play any of these teams and obviously we are going to get LSU. And what's better than that to play one of the most marquee programs in the country? Not the defending National Champion, but the year before defending National Champion. It's pretty exciting to play them - we're at 6:00 on FS1 followed by UConn-Iowa State at the same place at 8:30 so those UConn fans better be cheering for the Big East team. I'll tell you that, right? I think I'm in good shape, though. I don't see too many of them cheering for LSU.

TROVE: Speaking of the Big East, UConn is UConn and they'll have Paige Bueckers back, but how do you see the rest of the conference shaking out this year?

BOZZELLA: To be frank, the conference has lost a lot of talent. Villanova lost three kids that could have come back. Creighton lost one of their best players that could have come back. You know we lost a starter that could have come back in Micah Gray. You go down the list a couple of these other schools all lost players that could have come back plus we graduated a lot. So the league is still talented, but it's not as talented as it's been. It isn't, you've got to be blunt.

With that being said, I think this is one of our more overall talented teams. So I think, we were picked in that pseudo preseason poll - they do one during the summer to help with the scheduling - we were picked sixth. I think we'll be better than that. Whether we can get into that two, three spot, you know, we have to stay healthy and we have to gel as a team. We have the ability to. We'll see where that ends. We play only Villanova once and Georgetown once. So clearly, we're still playing UConn twice, Creighton twice, Providence was picked third and we're playing them twice. We're faced with a tough schedule, but I do think we have the ability to do really well. It's one of our more overall top to bottom talented teams. If Ramani can play she's an X factor. Ramani's an all-conference level player. You can't just look at her stats she's really good.