After two convincing wins this past week, the SMU men’ssoccer team improved its ranking positions in three polls.

The Mustangs are in sixth place (up from ninth last week) inthis week’s NSCAA/adidas poll, fourth in the Soccer Times.compoll and fifth in this week’s Soccer America poll.

SMU (7-1-1) opens the conference portion of the 2003 season,with road games against Evansville (5-2-2) on Friday night inIndiana and at Southwest Missouri State (5-2-1) on Sundayafternoon.

The Mustangs are 3-0 in Missouri Valley Conference openers, andare looking for their fourth straight regular season MVC title.

SMU junior forward Ryan Latham was selected as this week’sMVC offensive player of the week. It is the first league honor ofthe year for Latham as well as his first collegiate leaguehonor.

Latham scored three goals in SMU’s two games last week. Heleads the Ponies with five goals and 11 points.  He posted twogame-winning goals for the season and recorded his first collegiatemultiple-goal game with two against Centenary.

Latham is shooting 80 percent in shot-on-goal percentage for theseason.

The Mustangs’ star player isn’t the only personreceiving honors.

Head coach Schellas Hyndman is nearing another milestone. Heneeds one win to reach the 400-win mark for his career. He wouldbecome the third active Division I men’s coach to post atleast 400 career wins.

Hyndman became SMU’s all-time winningest coach lastWednesday night with his 300th Mustang victory.

-Portions of this article compiled from smumustangs.com.