Nico Campuzano earns USL Championship Team of the Week honor after shutout

Nico Campuzano kept Pittsburgh Riverhounds SC from leaving Hartford empty-handed, and USL Championship answered with a Week 16 Team of the Week selection built on a 0-0 road shutout. The goalkeeper’s late denial of Michee Ngalina in the 90th minute preserved a point at Trinity Health Stadium and gave Pittsburgh another clean sheet in a season that has started to look defined by survival and precision.

USL listed Campuzano as the Week 16 goalkeeper after a three-save shutout, a night that also produced a -1.78 Goals Prevented mark, two high claims and two punched clearances. Pittsburgh’s own match recap credited him with four saves and his fourth clean sheet, underscoring how much of the result rested on the final line of defense as Hartford pressed through a tight, physical game. In either accounting, Campuzano was the deciding figure for a Riverhounds side that spent long stretches without much room to breathe.

The draw carried extra weight because it came in a rematch of last year’s Eastern Conference Quarterfinal, when the teams also finished 0-0 before Pittsburgh advanced on penalties. Hartford had entered the match with the league’s second-best defensive record, having allowed only 10 goals in 11 league matches, while Pittsburgh arrived with clean sheets in three straight games and four of its previous five. The numbers framed a game with very few clean looks for either side, and left Campuzano to make the one intervention that mattered most.

The shutout also extended a run that speaks loudly about the Riverhounds’ identity. Pittsburgh had gone 426 minutes without allowing a goal and had posted four consecutive shutouts in all competitions after the result in Hartford. Hartford goalkeeper Antony Siaha needed only two saves and collected his league-leading seventh shutout, but the night belonged to Campuzano because he had to make the tougher stops under the more dangerous pressure.

The honor was Campuzano’s second major league recognition of the season. He had already been named USL Championship Player of the Week for Week 10 after a seven-save shutout in a 2-0 win at Louisville City FC, which was his season high in saves at the time. Pittsburgh signed him on January 2, 2026 to a deal through 2026 with a club option for 2027 after he led the USL Championship with 84 saves for Monterey Bay FC in 2025 and finished with a .677 save percentage across 28 matches. Through the early part of the season, he had played every minute for Pittsburgh, and the Riverhounds keep asking him to protect slim margins that can decide points.