Having crushed the University of Vermont at home on Sunday, the Boston University women’s soccer team will travel to Albany, N.Y. on Thursday to take on the Great Danes in a game that could turn into even more of a blowout.
The Terriers (6-4-3 overall, 2-0-1 America East) will look to continue their undefeated season against a University at Albany (1-12, 0-3) squad that has had an abysmal start to its season. The Danes earned their only win of 2005 against Siena University on Sept. 5, but have lost eight straight contests since.
While the not-so-Great Danes could be an easy win for surging BU, this game would also constitute what many sports experts call a “trap game.” Although BU should easily handle the slumping Albany, BU coach Nancy Feldman said the Terriers will only worry about the game at hand.
“We want our mentality to be the same for every game,” Feldman said. “We want to play up to the best of our ability. They haven’t had great success this season and they’ve allowed a lot of goals, but I don’t focus on records much. We just need to play our game and it shouldn’t be a problem.”
When the Terriers are playing their game, as they did against the Catamounts, they do what Feldman considers to be the most important element for success – scoring early and often. Against a team like Albany, which has allowed 39 goals this season (an average of exactly three per game), BU should have plenty of opportunities.
Along with the Danes’ horrific goals-against average, they’ve had an equally difficult time finding the back of the net this year. For the season, Albany has scored six goals in 13 games, an average of 0.46 goals per game.
And they’ve been shut out in eight of the last 10.
However, Feldman still worries about today’s contest. Numbers never predict upsets, and because of the way Albany plays, Feldman said she is wary that the Great Danes may find a way to steal a victory at the end of the game.
“You don’t want them to sneak one past you at the end,” Feldman said. “We may have trouble penetrating their defense because they’ll be in a defensive shell all game since we’ll probably be in their zone most of the game. They’re going to try to slow the game down.”
If Albany somehow does slow down the Terrier offense enough to make it a close game, the Great Danes will look to their most potent offensive source, junior midfielder Jamie Dougherty, to provide some fireworks in the BU half of the pitch.
For the season, Dougherty leads the Albany squad with six points, which she accumulated on three goals.
But if Dougherty and her cohorts fall behind BU early in the contest, as Vermont did on Sunday, Feldman said she would use her subs as a way to rest her starters for Saturday’s game against Binghamton University.
“If we get out to an early lead, we can let the starters rest and let our subs come in,” she said. “I know they’re going to want to get in, and hopefully we’ll get it done.”
In a game like the one BU will have on Thursday, getting it done will mean nothing less than a win – BU has to protect its spot at the top of the conference.
