Punishing team leaders to spark a struggling squad? Criticizing a lack of leadership from your veteran players?

Who does Neil Roberts think he is? Jack Parker?

Roberts didn’t go quite as far as kicking players off his team as Parker did with the Saponari brothers at the end of last season, but the men’s soccer coach did bench starters Aaron O’Neal, Stephen Knox and Michael Bustamante for Boston University’s game against the University of Rhode Island Friday night.

Despite missing the trio that combined for 51 points last season, the Terriers earned a 3-0 win over URI behind two goals from junior midfielder Ben Berube, who was playing out of position at forward to compensate for the absence of O’Neal and Knox.

The timing of Roberts’ decision could not have been better.

He sent a message to his leaders early in the season right before the team really needs to bear down for conference play. Also, he minimized the risk of the move by sitting his players against URI, a mediocre team from the weak Atlantic 10 conference.

In the short term, Roberts’ risk seems to have paid off. The Terriers followed up their victory over URI with a 2-1 win over then-No.20 Harvard University, a much tougher opponent, on Sunday.

For the second consecutive game, Berube was the star. He scored the winning goal in the second half and earned America East Player of the Week honors for his stellar performance over the weekend.

Berube exuded the confidence and ability to make the sort of big plays BU badly needed in its previous three games. The Terriers had lost all three and scored only one goal in that stretch.

His two-game performance provided a shot of energy for a team that badly needed a turnaround. Hopefully, the team can feed off this momentum and avoid hitting a snag in conference play like they did last season, when a promising 7-2-2 start was spoiled by four consecutive conference losses in October.

But BU cannot count on Berube to continue to carry the young team on his back the rest of the season.

The performance of O’Neal, Knox and Bustamante will decide if this weekend’s results end up as the turning point in the season or simply a fluke.

The players that Roberts decided to sit on Friday night are the only members of the BU team who scored multiple goals last season. Obviously, the trio will need to put the ball in the net to kick-start a team that ranked second in the conference in scoring last season.

More importantly, Roberts correctly recognized that if O’Neal, Knox and Bustamante do not show the ability to lead a squad that starts four freshmen, BU will not have a successful season.

But that doesn’t mean the coach’s move is guaranteed to pay off. It’s not easy for an athlete who competes at a high level to respond positively to being benched, even if it’s only for one game.

Roberts made the move to give his team leaders a chance to refocus, and hopefully that’s how the players will respond. It’s worked countless times for baseball managers looking for some way to bring a hitter out of a slump, but the manager or coach takes a risk that his message to refocus will not be confused with a lack of trust.

In the pros, an athlete that feels his team has lost confidence in him will sulk, demand a trade or simply refuse to play. In college, athletes show it in slightly different ways.

For example, last year’s men’s ice hockey team reacted to its coaches’ lack of faith by reportedly going out drinking the night before their conference semifinal game against the University of Maine. Predictably, it lost 5-2 the next day.

That’s not to say I blame Parker for trying to light a fire under his team last season. The team suffered throughout the year from a combination of post-national title apathy and poor leadership.

Realizing this, Parker took a risk in publicly criticizing his team, and while that seemed to pay dividends when the team won seven of nine in January, the team’s late season performance showed that it lacked confidence and trust in each other.

Like Parker, I think Roberts made the right call in stepping in to motivate a struggling team. I just hope the men’s soccer team ends up with a different set of results.