On The Pitch
• The Missouri State Bears are the No. 5 seed and face off against No. 4 seeded FIU in the 2025 American Conference Men's Soccer Championship Tournament quarterfinal on Friday, Nov. 7 at 6:00 p.m.
• The Bears are 6-5-4 on the season as they look to add to their streak of nine consecutive seasons with a winning record.
• The Bears are looking to add a fifth conference tournament championship trophy to their cabinet (1999, 2020-21, 2021, 2022) and their first as a member of the American Athletic Conference. The Bears have an all-time record of 24-21-8 in the conference tournament play.
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Fumiya Shiraishi has scored or assisted 11-of-21 goals scored by the Bears this season, and leads the American with eight goals scored. He is a three-time American Conference Offensive Player of the Week, the first Bear in history to win three offensive weekly conference award honors in a single season.
• Senior goalkeeper
Will Lowry is third in career in goals-against-average at MSU, with an 0.76 average. The record holder Michael Creek held an 0.69 average from 2018-21. Lowry ranked fifth nationally in 2024 in goalkeeper goals against average (.674), letting past only nine goals in more than 1,200 minutes of play.
• The Bears and the Panthers are tied in series history at 1-1. This will be the second meeting between the Bears and the Panthers this season, with FIU beating Missouri State in regular season play with a 1-0 scoreline on Sept. 21 in Miami.
• Since the beginning of the 2019 season, Missouri State holds the best Division I overall record of 89-20-14 (.781), second best conference record of 49-5-6 (.867) and fifth-best home record of 50-9-7 (.811).
• MSU has made six straight NCAA appearances, joining Clemson, Georgetown, Indiana, Marshall, Wake Forest and Pittsburgh as the only seven DI teams in the nation to make every tournament since 2019.
• Missouri State was ranked in the first two United Soccer Coaches Polls in 2025 and has been ranked in at least one poll in eight consecutive seasons.
• The Bears are in their first season in the American Conference in 2025 after spending the previous 34 seasons in the Missouri Valley. MoState enjoyed plenty of success in the MVC, with the program's 12 regular season championships, four conference tournament crowns and nine NCAA Tournament appearances all coming since 1997.
