Scoring goals in soccer takes something more than speed, size, skills and a powerful striking leg.
“Scoring goals for me us such a mentality,” UConn’s Austin Brummett said. “You go in with this belief in yourself, and you visualize, you think it’s going to happen on the field and it does. For me, I just want to score so bad. Like, it’s just … deep in my soul.
“I’m going to lay my body on the line to get the ball in the back of the net, I don’t care how it looks, a tap-in, off my knee, off my chest, I want it so much more than a lot of people.”
After last season, UConn coach Chris Gbandi and his staff went looking for an experienced player with the soul of a scorer and associate head coach Stefan Defregger pushed hard for Brummett, who’d played three years at San Diego State and was in the portal seeking a change of scenery. A New Hampshire native, Brummett had 14 goals, 10 assists in 52 games for the Aztecs.
“Once he got here in the spring, we realized, we got the right guy,” Gbandi said. “He has that competitive edge, holds guys accountable, but also you can hold him accountable. To be a guy that. ‘I’m a striker, but you can hold me accountable in terms of how hard I work defensively, winning headers.’ That’s one of the biggest things he’s brought to the group, that winning mentality.”
Brummett has six goals and one assist in his first nine games for the Huskies (6-1-3), who played Villanova in Storrs on Saturday night. UConn rode its defense to an 8-4-6 record in 2024, sending goalkeeper Jayden Hibbert and forward Eli Conway into the MSL draft.
“Right as I went home to New Hampshire for Christmas, I took a visit to campus and I just loved it,” Brummett said. “The attraction for me, I wanted to play in the Big East, which is a great league, and (UConn) had (two) guys drafted (by MLS) last year, so they do a good job of getting guys to the professional world. Coach Gbandi told me he could help me do that, and I believe in him.”
Brummett played as a teenager in the Seattle Sounders and Red Bulls academies. After playing 23 games with Red Bulls II in the United Soccer League, he considered going right from high school to the pros. But after an injury, his father, Russell, who played quarterback at Harvard, and his mother, Michelle, who played soccer at Harvard, urged him to play in college and get a degree, as his siblings were doing. Austin, a psychology major, hopes to turn pro after this season. Meantime, he’s found a philosophical home at UConn, a fiery group.
“The Northeast has a style to it,” Austin said. “It’s a lot different than Southern California, everything is upbeat, a lot faster and I love that. The biggest thing with this group, we’re so competitive. As soon as I got here, before we even started training, captains’ practices, people are (cussing) at each other, going hard, five on five, when coaches weren’t even watching. That was the kind of group I wanted to be a part of.”
Gbandi, in his fourth season, jokes that he sometimes feels as though the Huskies have 28 coaches on the roster, but he’s relishing the passion of this group. “Sometimes, we just bring them back a little bit, ‘This is how we’re going to do it,’ but you’d rather have that than the other way around.”
Brummett scored the only goal in the Huskies’ 1-0 win to open the season at Syracuse, and five in a four-game stretch between Aug. 31 and Sept. 10. His go-to celebration is to thrust out his right palm and put his left forefinger to his lips to shush the opponents. He picked up an assist in the Huskies’ biggest win, at 10th-ranked Akron, but things were muted with the first loss, 4-1, to 14th-ranked Bryant on Tuesday.
“One thing I’ve always prided myself on is being clinical with my chances,” Brummett said. “And one thing this team has been able to do is get me quality chances. With a lot of the guys, I’ve built a relationship where they have faith, it’s going to wind up in the back of the net.”
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Said Gbandi, “Austin’s not afraid of the burden of having to score goals, and that’s the biggest thing, where it starts for some of the top strikers in the country and in the world.”
The Huskies, outscoring opponents 19-9, are 26th in the NCAA’s RPI, 22nd in the most recent United Soccer coaches’ poll. The UConn campus has always looked for reasons to come out and scream at Morrone Stadium, where the 2000 national champs, for which Gbandi played, will be honored later this season. They’ve been filling the bleachers again.
“The school spirit is like, ridiculous,” Brummett said. “I walk around campus and everyone is wearing Huskies stuff, everyone loves the school. Our home opener against UMass was mind-blowing, the fact we had over 4,000 people at a college soccer game is crazy. We want to be an exciting team for the students to come watch. Obviously, the fans love goals, so I’m happy I can supply as many as I can.”
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Gift of life from Conn College
Michael Moran, a junior on Conn College’s men’s lacrosse team, was at MedStar Georgetown University Hospital in D.C. this week, donating stem cells for a young woman fighting Hodgkin lymphoma, the school said. He learned he was a potential match during a Gift of Life donor drive on the New London campus, and after numerous tests it was confirmed.
“Finding out I was a match made me a little nervous, to be honest,” Moran said. “I wasn’t sure how intensive the process was going to be, but after speaking with the people at Gift of Life, they made it clear there was nothing to worry about. At the end of the day, I was given the opportunity to help somebody, so I felt it was my responsibility to do so.”
The six-hour apheresis process involved drawing blood from one arm, filtering out stem cells and returning the blood through the other arm. All went well and Moran was back at school Friday.
Yale’s Keith Allain steps away
Without fanfare, Keith Allain, 67, retired after 19 distinguished seasons as Yale’s hockey coach in early September. “Serving as Yale’s head hockey coach has been one of the greatest joys of my life,” said Allain, Yale Class of ’80.
The Bulldogs won the national championship in 2013 and played in six NCAA Tournaments in his tenure, and it says something that several former NHL players trusted their sons to be coached by Allain, including Kevin Dineen’s son, Will, last year’s captain, Mark Pearson’s son, Luke, Kevin Steven’s son, Luke, and Mike Richter’s son, Will, now a sophomore.
Joe Howe will be Yale’s interim coach this season.
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Sunday short takes
*Mark Lasry, former Bucks owner and Hall-West Hartford grad who was leading an effort to buy the Connecticut Sun and bring them to Hartford has walked things back, telling CNBC Sports this week, “I thought this would be fun and interesting for the state to try to keep a team there. But move it, I think, to Hartford, I don’t think that’s going to work.”
… Houston, you have one less problem.
*Geno Auriemma and his wife, Kathy, became a grandparents for the fifth time. Daughter Alyssa gave birth to a baby girl, Olivia Kathryn, this week. Everyone’s healthy and happy, the coach reports.
*If Cal Raleigh wins the MVP, he will ruin one of the great trivia questions of all time, becoming the first switch-hitter to win in the AL since, wait for it, Vida Blue, 1971
*UConn’s George Springer, who had a renaissance year for the Blue Jays (.305, 31 homers, 82 RBI in 138 games) will not win the MVP for two reasons: Raleigh and Aaron Judge. But it’s fair to say Springer has been as important to his team as anyone.
*Great stories flowed throughout Southern Connecticut’s Hoops Tip-Off Wednesday night. Donny Marshall remembered Jim Calhoun calling him a “hot shot” over and over again in practice. When he asked why, Scott Burrell reminded him of Calhoun’s Boston accent. He was calling him “horse(bleep)” … Speaking of which, there was the time freshman Diana Taurasi challenged Marshall to a game of H-O-R-S-E and beat him handily. “She said, ‘That’s E, big fella,’ and slapped me on the butt,” said Marshall, who was playing in the NBA at the time.
*It was inevitable that Jaxson Dart was going to play this year. Game 4 is a little early, but if he is fortunate enough to have Andrew Thomas helping protect him, that will certainly help. Keep the goals realistic. No rookie quarterback is going to save this Giants’ season, but if Dart doesn’t look like a deer in the headlights, shows real flashes of potential, that should energize the fans. Phil Simms took over an 0-5 team in 1979 and won his first four starts, just saying.
*James Doran, after 20 years with men’s basketball, was promoted to head athletic trainer at UConn, and moved his team responsibility to men’s soccer, switching with Tavarus Ferguson. When a skunk meandered onto the field during a recent soccer home game, players ran off the field for cover. Doran knew what to do. He gathered a phalanx and, keeping a safe distance, shooed Pepe Le Pew to an open gate.
Last word
Remember when the Yankees were foundering in July and Aaron Boone told his players they were “the best team in the league?” He was lambasted by those who actually believe a coach/manager’s job is to pile on and tear down his players publicly, rather than buoy and build them up when times are tough. On this final day of the regular season, the Yankees are neck and neck with Toronto for the best record in the league, have been the best team in baseball since early August, and this is far from a vintage Yankee roster.