{"id":23517,"date":"2014-01-16T19:40:01","date_gmt":"2014-01-17T00:40:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/nesoccertoday.com\/?p=23517"},"modified":"2014-01-16T19:50:14","modified_gmt":"2014-01-17T00:50:14","slug":"uconns-blake-tops-list-of-new-england-collegians-drafted","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/nesoccertoday.com\/?p=23517","title":{"rendered":"UConn&#8217;s Blake Tops List of New England Collegians Tabbed at Draft"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><script height=\"364px\" width=\"455px\" src=\"http:\/\/player.ooyala.com\/iframe.js#pbid=2d940881487848159b3b99a3ae8125b9&#038;ec=1jazNzajqhz615y8vR1jJvPfNWBPH9F8\"><\/script><\/p>\n<p>First overall pick\u00a0Andre Blake\u00a0was among three New England collegians selected in Thursday&#8217;s SuperDraft.<\/p>\n<p>Blake was selected by the Philadelphia Union, who traded up to\u00a0select the\u00a0Generation adidas\u00a0goalkeeper from UConn. University of Hartford center back and fellow Generation adidas member Damion Lowe was selected by the Seattle Sounders with the eighth pick, while Blake&#8217;s UConn teammate, Mamadou Diouf, was tabbed by the Vancouver Whitecaps with the 30th pick.<\/p>\n<p>Blake\u00a0became the first player from a New England college taken first overall since 2002 (Chris Gbandi).\u00a0The 23-year-old keeper\u00a0posted a 0.75 goals against average and collected 10 clean sheets in the process during the Huskies&#8217; 2013 campaign. His 36 career shutouts rank third all-time in program history, while his 46 wins are the fourth most by a Connecticut goalkeeper.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Andre&#8217;s selection today has verified what we have thought for some time,&#8221; said longtime UConn head coach Ray Reid in a release from the school on Thursday. &#8220;He is a big time goalkeeper and will have a great professional career.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Lowe\u00a0started and played in 43 matches, totaling 20 career points on eight goals and four assists while helping the defense shut out 15 opponents. He is the first Hartford prospect selected in the MLS draft since Rob Jachym, who was selected by the Columbus Crew in the first round (3rd overall) of the 1997 draft.<\/p>\n<p>Diouf collected\u00a036 career goals at UConn, ranking him eighth in Husky history. The Dakar, Senegal native recorded a career-high five assists in 2013 and added two goals. He collected a career-high five assists in 2013, and topped UConn&#8217;s scoring charts with 15 tallies in 2012.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Mamadou leaves UConn with every possible honor he could have achieved,&#8221; said Reid. &#8220;He is deserving of being drafted and will do a fantastic job at the next level.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>The SuperDraft will resume on Tuesday, when the third and fourth rounds will be conducted via conference call. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>UConn&#8217;s Andre Blake and Mamadou Diouf, along with Hartford&#8217;s Damion Lowe, all had their names called at Thursday&#8217;s draft. <\/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":[1],"tags":[],"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\/23517"}],"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=23517"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/nesoccertoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23517\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":23526,"href":"https:\/\/nesoccertoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23517\/revisions\/23526"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nesoccertoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=23517"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nesoccertoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=23517"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nesoccertoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=23517"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}