AMHERST — The first time UMass men’s soccer head coach Fran O’Leary saw striker Alec Hughes play in person, he scored five goals.

Now five years removed from Glastonbury High School, Hughes is leading the NCAA with 10 goals and is just three shy of Jeff Deren’s all-time Minutemen record of 48, notched in 2002.

“We’ve got, if not the best striker in the country, definitely one of the top college strikers in the country,” O’Leary said.

Through seven games of non-conference play, UMass is 4-2-1 and Hughes has scored in five straight matches, including a run of four straight wins. He tallied a hat trick in a 7-1 win over UMass Lowell on Sept. 11, scored the decider in a 1-0 win over Brown on Sept. 14 and recorded another hat trick in a 5-0 win over Dartmouth on Tuesday. UMass opens its final season of Atlantic 10 conference play on Saturday at noon against 5-1 George Mason at Rudd Field.

“We’re extremely confident right now,” Hughes said. “It kind of feels like we’re just rolling and we’re giving out good performance after good performance.”

Hughes has led the conference in scoring in three of his four seasons in Amherst and earned Atlantic 10 Co-Offensive Player of the Year honors in 2022 before getting the award all to himself last season. He was named a 2023 Third-Team All-American by College Soccer News.

O’Leary worked with former Premier League star Jermaine Defoe as an assistant at Toronto FC, but since joining the Minutemen in 2015, he hasn’t seen anyone like Hughes.

“He’s the most prolific attacking player we’ve had,” O’Leary said. “(There’s) nobody with his pace and power.”

Hughes’ combination of a 6-foot-4 frame and speed that O’Leary says is possibly the best in the nation have given A-10 defenders fits since 2020, when Hughes took home the conference’s Rookie of the Year award. After a down year in 2021 where he finished third on the team in goals, he’s become the unquestioned top option as an upperclassmen.

“We just started putting balls in areas where he could play to his strengths,” O’Leary said. “He’s a very bright guy, he picked up on it quickly, you don’t have to tell Alec too many things twice. And it’s been reflected in the amount of goals he’s scored in the past few years.”

This season — and especially after the past week — Hughes has once again vaulted himself into the conversation of UMass all-time greats. 

He started paying attention to Deren’s program record last year, and he said he came into this season with the record as his top individual goal. He called his run of seven goals in his past three games the best run of goal scoring form in his UMass career. He sits two goals clear of anyone else in college soccer.

Despite transfers, especially at the graduate level, gaining more and more prominence in college soccer, Hughes said he never seriously considered entering the portal. He’s set to graduate with an engineering degree in December and he didn’t want to jeopardize the success he’s enjoyed throughout his first four years in Amherst.

With only three goals needed to tie the record, and 10 conference games still to play, the NCAA’s leading goalscorer has his eyes on Deren’s mark.

“I would say it’s a motivation factor right now to keep scoring goals,” Hughes said. “And hopefully that leads to winning games as well.”