BATON ROUGE — The weekly honors continue to pour in for members of the LSU soccer team as forwards Rachel Yepez and Carlie Banks picked up Southeastern Conference Player of the Week honors from the league office on Monday afternoon.
Yepez is the SEC Offensive Player of the Week and Banks is the SEC Freshman of the Week following a weekend in which the Tigers earned a pair of dominating wins in conference play.
The Tigers kicked off SEC play at home with an impressive 6-0 win over then No. 8-ranked Georgia and a dominating 5-1 win over Tennessee for their first ever sweep on the opening weekend of league play. It was a performance that earned the Tigers a No. 20 national ranking in the latest Soccer America Top 25.
Yepez, a senior from Fayetteville, N.C., has already been named to the TopDrawerSoccer.com Women’s College Team of the Week after leading the Tigers with three goals and two assists on the weekend.
She scored the game-winning goal against the Lady Volunteers in the ninth minute of Sunday’s match. In fact, Yepez scored two goals just 2 minutes, 6 seconds apart against Tennessee, including the first goal of the match at the 6:52 mark of the first half. She also added one goal and two assists in the victory over the Bulldogs, including an assist on Banks’ game-winner in the third minute of play.
Banks, a native of Peachtree City, Ga., became the first LSU Tiger to score a hat trick since All-American Malorie Rutledge accomplished the feat last season in a 7-0 win over Alabama on Oct. 12, 2008.
Not only was it her first career hat trick, but Banks’ three goals against the Bulldogs are the first goals of her collegiate career at LSU. She proved to be very efficient with her opportunities against Georgia as she scored on each of her three shots in the match.
Banks scored the game-winning goal against Georgia just 2:03 into the match before adding a second goal at the 18:28 mark to give LSU a 2-0 first-half lead. She then gave the Tigers a comfortable 4-0 advantage with her third goal of the match at the 62:52 mark of the second half.