Newly-acquired striker Alencar Junior\u00a0collected his second\u00a0hat trick\u00a0in three games\u00a0to lead the Western Mass Pioneers (5-1-2, 17 points) \u00a0to a 4-0 thumping of Seacoast United Phantoms (0-4-4, 4 points)\u00a0on Friday at Lusitano Stadium.<\/p>\n
Junior, who also bagged a three-goal effort\u00a0against Real Boston on Jun. 19, added three more in the 5th,\u00a012th and\u00a043rd minutes, while teammate Drou Goff capped the scoring in the 80th minute.<\/p>\n
Warren Gross\u00a0denied\u00a0four Phantom\u00a0shots and\u00a0collected his third clean sheet in the process.<\/p>\n
In his last three games, Junior, the reigning PDL Player of the Week,\u00a0has tallied eight goals, two shy of the division-high 10 he scored for the Hydra last season.<\/p>\n
The Western Mass win gives them a share of first place with Ottawa and Portland, with all three having 17 points in eight games. Seacoast’s defeat keeps them mired in the Northeast Division basement, and winless in their first eight.<\/p>\n
The Pioneers won’t have\u00a0much time to celebrate\u00a0their four-goal performance, as they head to the Nutmeg State on Saturday for a 7pm game against CFC Azul at Central Connecticut State University in New Britain.<\/p>\n
The Phantoms return to action on Sunday at 7pm when they face Real Boston Rams at Muscato Stadium in Easton, Mass.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Alencar Junior scored three times before the interval to lift the Pioneers to a 4-0 win over the Phantoms.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[84,89,91],"tags":[440,375,452,1291,347,441,1294],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_likes_enabled":false,"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nesoccertoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20230"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nesoccertoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nesoccertoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nesoccertoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nesoccertoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=20230"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/nesoccertoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20230\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":20254,"href":"https:\/\/nesoccertoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20230\/revisions\/20254"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nesoccertoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=20230"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nesoccertoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=20230"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nesoccertoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=20230"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}