Looking ahead to his team’s upcoming schedule a few weeks ago, Bryant Men’s Soccer Head Coach Ruben Resendes noted a tough stretch of games against nationally ranked teams like Providence College, University of Massachusetts Amherst, and University of Connecticut.
Fast forwarding to the present, Resendes has led his team to convincing wins over all three teams, plus 3-0 and 4-1 thrashings of UMass Lowell and UConn in the last two weeks and a rise to #14 in the national Division I coaches poll.
Still to come in the second half of a 9-0-1 season that’s been historically successful so far: an Oct. 25 home tilt against defending national champion University of Vermont — the team that ended Bryant’s dreams of an America East Championship last year with a 2-1 victory in the finals.
“We’re definitely not underdogs, but they're not underdogs to us, either,” says Resendes. “We’re contemporaries competing for the same thing. We all want to be in the NCAA Tournament.”
Resendes is no stranger to that level of success: In 2023, his first year leading the program, the Bulldogs went 16-2-2 on their way to the America East title before falling to Yale in a heartbreaking 1-0 home loss in the first round of the NCAA Division I men's soccer tournament.
“I think we were the better team in 2023, and we should have won that Yale game, but that's sports,” says Resendes.
The 2023 team, which recorded the best season in the history of Bryant’s men’s soccer program, also ran out to a hot start, going 7-0 before falling 1-0 to Vermont for the first of its two losses that season. The 2025 team’s current winning streak means this year’s squad has a chance to be even better.
“We’re proud of our record and how we’re playing at this point of the season, but the truth is this is exactly what our expectations are for ourselves,” says Resendes. “We treat every game like it’s a final. That’s what we’ve done until this point and what we will continue to do.”
“We’re proud of our record and how we’re playing at this point of the season, but the truth is this is exactly what our expectations are for ourselves."
At the start of last season, “We thought the success was going to naturally continue, but we did lose quite a few guys from that 2023 championship team, so it was a little bit of a rebuild,” he recalls.
Some might debate whether a 10-6-4 record and making it to the conference championship could really be considered a rebuilding year.
“It wasn't a bad season at all, but if you want to get an invitation to the NCAA Tournament, you’ve got to have 14 or 15 wins or win the conference title to get an automatic bid,” Resendes notes.
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Between returning players and a strong recruiting class, Resendes entered the 2025 season optimistic about hitting those kinds of marks.
“We had some tough games to start the season and, based on the leadership and experience we have, you just feel confident that the guys are going to be able to find a way to win the game,” he says.
“We had some tough games to start the season and, based on the leadership and experience we have, you just feel confident that the guys are going to be able to find a way to win the game."
As has been the case going back to the 2023 championship season, the 2025 team’s defense is anchored by sixth-year player Abdel Talabi ‘24, ’26MBA, who helped Bryant lead the nation in shutouts percentage and goals against average that year. “He’s a rock at the back, and he's been a captain since he was a sophomore, even before I got here,” says Resendes.
Spanish recruit Santiago Blasco Gomez ’25 ‘26MBA, now in his third season with the Bulldogs, anchors the midfield, while the offensive attack is spearheaded by forward and fellow Spaniard Marc Pitarch Bayot ‘25, ’26MBA, whose post-graduate return to the team was a pleasant surprise for his coach. “It wasn't really in his plans to come back to do his master's degree, but we convinced him,” says Resendes.
Bryant’s strong recruiting game in Spain has also paid off this season with the emergence of Madrid native Jaime Amaro ’28 as the team’s top scorer, with four goals and two assists through nine games (and just five starts). Gomez’s fellow grad student, Mamadi Jiana ‘25, also has four goals on the season so far.
Pitarch Bayot has been relatively quiet on the score sheet so far this year, which Resendes attributes to close marking by other teams wary of his explosive abilities. “But his presence opens up things for other guys, because people are so fixated on him,” he says.
Resendes says the depth of his roster is probably the biggest strength of the 2025 team.
“We have a lot of guys who can play,” he says. “It's difficult to pick a starting lineup. It's difficult to choose who the substitutes are going to be. And even after we choose substitutes, there are guys who are still not playing that would be starters on pretty much almost every team in our conference.”
“I also think we have a variety of different guys who can score,” he adds. “In the past we leaned too much on Marc to score. In 2023, we had a lot of success because he was our main scorer, but then we had three or four other guys who dished out five or six goals, and that helped. This year, I don't know who our main scorer will be, but we definitely have five or six guys who can score.”
Resendes says fans who come out to the team’s home games can expect to see "some of the highest-level college soccer in the country.” He’s been pleased with the fan support so far this season, with crowds of 500-plus fans at the first few matches — not a huge number in isolation, but impressive as a percentage of the overall student population at an institution the size of Bryant.
The Oct. 25 match against Vermont is one that both the teams and their fans have circled on the calendar.
“Every game is important: I put my coach's hat on when I say that,” says Resendes. “But Vermont was the best team last year and the three, four years prior to that was consistently one of the best teams in the conference. Whenever you have one of the better teams in the conference coming to play you at home, not to mention the fact that they won a national championship last year, it’s a big game.
“We'll see where the season goes by that point for both us and Vermont. In a perfect world, we’ll both be pushing for first place, and the game will have all those implications.”