Leonard Griffin Named Pac-12 Coach Of The Year

MSOC11/14/2023 2:50 PM | By: Cal Athletics

BERKELEY – California men’s soccer head coach Leonard Griffin was named the Pac-12 Coach of the Year on Tuesday, as the Golden Bears collected a large share of the conference awards, with Wyatt Meyer being named the Pac-12 Defensive Player of the Year and five Bears – Meyer, Evan Davila, Kevin Carmichael, Nonso Adimabua and Connor Lambe – garnering All-Pac-12 honors.
 
Griffin, in his second season in charge of the program, earned Cal’s first Pac-12 Coach of the Year award since 2010, when Kevin Grimes picked up his fifth conference accolade. Griffin led the resurgent Bears to a 7-6-5 record, which more than doubled the win total of the 2022 season and marked the Bears’ first winning record since 2019. His conference coaching award comes 20 years after Griffin garnered All-America and All-Pac-12 First-Team honors as a senior player at UCLA.
 
Meyer, a Berkeley native who played alternately as a central defender and a defensive central midfielder, was a key member of an overall team effort that led to the team’s 1.06 goals-against average, which was Cal’s best defensive performance since 2013 (0.97 GAA). The Bears allowed just 11 goals in conference games, tied for the second-lowest total in the Pac-12. Also a contributor to the attack, Meyer scored his first goal since 2021 in Saturday’s season finale at then-No. 22 Stanford and posted two assists in his fourth season.
 
Carmichael often paired with Meyer in central defense to anchor a stingy backline. The junior from Thousand Oaks was also a constant danger in the air to opposing defenses, as he scored a career-high three goals and added his first career assist to rank third in points (7) at Cal. In a 2-1 win over Washington at Edwards Stadium, the leaping Carmichael scored the game-winning goal on a Davila corner kick that deflected off the defender’s upper back and into the net.
 
Davila produced the best season of his career, posting career highs in goals (5), assists (5), points (15) and game-winning goals (3) – with the winners coming against FDU, Dartmouth and San Diego State – to lead the Bears in each category. In the Pac-12, the senior midfielder from Sherman Oaks ranked second in game-winning goals, sixth in goals and in points, and 10th in assists. Davila also scored a tremendous goal in a 1-1 draw with then-No. 19 Stanford on Oct. 29, dribbling almost half the field before juking a defender and scoring…