The men’s soccer team travels to Providence, R.I. this weekend for the Adidas-Brown Classic. The Mustangs will play against two Ivy League teams, Brown University on Friday and Yale University on Sunday.

SMU has not played Brown University since 2006 at Westcott Field, when SMU was ranked No. 3 and Brown was ranked at No. 17. The Mustangs walked away with a 5-1 victory.

This year’s team is not currently ranked in the top 25 in the most recent NSCAA poll. It has been even longer since SMU went up against Yale University. The last match-up was in 2004 and ended with a 5-2 Mustang win.

SMU has had little interaction with the Ivy League in recent years. Other than Brown and Yale, SMU played against Dartmouth in 1997 in the NCAA Tournament.

SMU is currently 3-0-0 against the Ivy League, and the team and its coach are hopeful the record will only improve after this weekend.

After last weekend’s split, head coach Tim McClements said that many of the team’s weaknesses have been exposed during their match-up with Akron.

“We learned a lot about ourselves,” McClements said. He added that those weaknesses were addressed during this week’s practices by focusing on their speed of play and defensive shape.

McClements also said that at this point during the season, the focus of the team is primarily inverted. Right now, the Mustangs are worrying more about themselves and less on the competition.

Conference games do not begin until Oct. 4, when SMU plays Memphis. Until then, coaches and players are working toward the betterment of the team with the ultimate goal of post-season play.

“We are holding ourselves to a standard that we want to play at. If we do that we should be fine,” McClements said, speaking about the upcoming match as well as the rest of the season.