STORRS — Preston Alessio comes from Connecticut, but he enjoys a brand of soccer played in Brazil, especially what he sees in Neymar, the nation’s famed attacking midfielder.
“That Brazilian flair,” Alesso said. “It’s kind of like ‘flow state,’ or as they call it, ‘ginga.’ Kind of a way of playing freely, without any restrictions, no robotic movements; freely, flowing, enjoying the game and just doing what makes you free.”
When the Huskies were losing to Akron at halftime in the Big East semifinal on Nov. 13, coach Chris Gbandi put Alessio, the freshman from Beacon Falls, into the game and he changed it with his own free-flowing style on the offensive end, helping to create the tying goal with an assist and then scoring the game-winner.
“It’s an intense game, a night game, a lot of people in the crowd,” Alessio said, “I knew I had to step up my game for an occasion like that.”
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Alessio played more minutes in the final, and got two shots off in the 3-1 loss to Georgetown. The Huskies came out well-positioned with an 11-4-4 record, good enough to earn the No. 13 seed in the 48-team NCAA College Cup field. They received a first-round bye and a home game, the first to be played at the refurbished Morrone Stadium. UConn, in the tournament for the first time since 2018, will play Cornell in the Round of 32 on Sunday at 2 p.m.
Alessio, the state’s Gatorade Player of Year in 2024, has started six games and has three goals and four assists.
“Coming in, I didn’t really know what to expect coming to a D-1 program from high school,” Alessio said after a training session this week. “I knew it would be a high level and that’s what I got, the games were very intense. They were telling me I was doing all the right things and I just had to keep my head down, just keep in working and it’ll come.”
The coaches and older players kept Alessio engaged and working at it when time on the pitch was coming irregularly on a team of veterans, from all over the world.
“In college soccer, college athletics in general, it’s becoming tougher for young players to play,” Gbandi said. “One of the things we’ve done here is give young players a chance to play if they’re good enough. We’ve talked to Preston, let him know he’s a huge part of what we’re trying to do here, not only this year but in the future.
“We don’t see him as a one-year wonder. A lot of it is on Preston to come to training and train at the level we expect every single day, and he’s done that all year.”
Alessio, who started at Woodland High, then went to Taft School in Watertown, aligns perfectly with the philosophy of program-building Gbandi, who played on UConn’s last national championship team in 2000, brought with him when he returned with a coaching track record.
In 2021, his fifth year at Northeastern, Gbandi brought the program, which had posted three wins the year before he took over, to 11-6-1. With Ray Reid retiring, he endorsed his former star player, but urged UConn’s hierarchy to give Gbandi time.
It’s year four, and UConn’s time has come.
“Probably from the outside looking in, it was not as fast as people would have liked,” Gbandi said, “but we just tried to do it the right way, try to get guys here that we can build upon and not go the crazy all-transfer, try to build it little by little and I’m hoping now people will see that some of it was okay.
“We were just trying to do it, in our minds, the right way. When I talk about ‘Doing it the right way,’ (Alessio) is kind of what I mean, giving young players an opportunity.”
After finishes of 9-8-1, 7-7-3 and 8-4-6, Gbandi went looking for offense and handpicked a striker, Austin Brummett, in the transfer portal from San Diego State, and he has become the team’s leading scorer. The Huskies, who had three players taken in the Major League Soccer SuperDraft in 2025, and two the year before, could have a goalkeeper drafted for the third year in a row when Kyle Durham, who has played every minute, allowing 1.05 goals per game, is eligible in ’26.
“A place like this is always going to have good players,” said senior Nico Tomerius, who came in as a freshman in Gbandi’s first year. “The biggest growth we’ve seen is just the mentality of the group. We really got across this year that everybody has to buy in, we need to be like a family, more than just a team. It’s been great to see that happen starting in the spring.”
There are five Big East teams in the NCAA Tournament, so UConn, which also played tournament teams Syracuse and No. 2 seed Bryant during the year, has played a strong schedule, arriving battle-tested for a tournament, that given the nature of soccer, in which any team can emerge. Vermont, the defending champ, is the No.1 seed.
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Alessio will not be the only player who could experience the full dose of what UConn soccer has always been. The holiday break may keep student attendance down for this postseason game, but the stadium promises to be packed, about 4,000 on hand, like the it was when Joe Morrone’s and Ray Reid’s best teams were on the pitch.
Can UConn, with soccer championships in 1948, 1981 and 2000, ginga all the way in 2025? The freshman could be a lurking, game-changer as the Huskies navigate the field.
“He’s a different profile than certain players we have,” Tomerius said. “He just loves to get on the ball and loves to get stuff done; super-attacking minded. Sometimes, it feels like he doesn’t think, and I mean that in a good way. It’s like the flow state athletes like to talk about. When he gets into it, he brings us a lot of joy on the field.”
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