Men’s soccer: a tale of many seasons

When a team is streaky, the old cliche´ says ‘a tale of two seasons.’ But for the Boston University men’s soccer team, it was more like four or five.

With high expectations coming into the season, the Terriers could ill-afford to be streaky, especially when America East play came along. But streaky is perhaps the best adjective to describe them. Not once did the Terriers have a win followed by a single loss, and only once was a loss followed by a single win. The season in a nutshell: winless in the first two, unbeaten in the next four, lose two in a row, win three, tie twice, lose three, and dominate in the season finale.

The season began in California while most BU students were unpacking and buying books. The Terriers had no chance to start easy, as their first opponent was the University of California at Los Angeles, then the No. 13 team in the nation. After playing tough for the first 65 minutes, the Terriers let a 1-1 tie slip away as the Bruins scored three goals in a ten-minute span. Even with the loss, BU Coach Neil Roberts was pleased with his team’s performance against such a high-quality opponent.

BU finished up the West Coast trip with a 0-0 tie against California State University at Fullerton, and came home winless but pleased with its performance. The Terriers returned home to a field on which they hadn’t lost in nearly a year. The four-game homestand that followed was the strongest stretch of the season for the Terriers.

First came a dominant 3-1 win over the University of Massachusetts. Freshman Sedrick Chin scored a goal and added two assists in front of a raucous crowd of 2,107 at Nickerson Field.

BU followed up the dominant performance against the Minutemen with a totally different type of win a few nights later. After Chin tied the score at one just before the half, the game went scoreless through 43 minutes of the second. Junior midfielder Andrew Dorman changed that with only 1:24 left when he lobbed home the game-winner.

After defeating Dartmouth College, 1-0, for their third straight home win, the Terriers faced the biggest challenge of the season. No. 7 University of Connecticut took the trip up I-95, and while the Huskies were most likely expecting a challenging game, they got more than they bargained for.

Connecticut players got more and more frustrated as the game went along. The Huskies were dominating the Terriers, passing the ball well through the midfield, and even getting some more-than-decent scoring chances. But every time a shot came near the BU goal, a wall named Matt Smith turned it away. The senior goalie had nine saves, as the Terriers got only two shots on goal. But none of that mattered halfway through the second half when a long throw-in by senior David Fahey ended up on the foot of sophomore midfielder Federico Bianchi who banged it home for the only score of the night.

On the strength of their 1-0 upset win, the Terriers catapulted to No. 9 in the national polls. BU traveled to Boston College a few days later not as the giant-killers in waiting, but as the giants waiting to be killed. The No. 21 Eagles, even after being outplayed most of the game, capitalized on two Terrier mistakes and stole a 2-1 win away from their cross-town rivals. The Terriers’ lone goal was a 25-yard cannon of a free kick by Dorman that left the BC players speechless, and even the Eagle fans applauding.

After playing well and still falling to the Eagles, the demoralized Terriers traveled to the University of Rhode Island for a game that most expected to be a gimme for BU. But the Terriers got absolutely nothing going on offense, and fell, 2-1, to the upstart Rams.

With a week off to figure out what went wrong, the now-unranked Terriers came out strong against the No. 12 University of San Diego, earning their second upset of a top 15 team. BU needed every one of Smith’s career-high 13 saves, as senior Anthony D’Angelo notched the game-winner in the 58th minute.

Even with only one day’s rest after the win, the Terriers started America East play on a roll, and proved it with convincing 3-0 wins over the State University of New York at Binghamton and the University of Maine. Riding high, BU came back to earth with 1-1 ties against West Virginia University and the State University of New York at Albany. The draw against the Mountaineers of the Big East Conferences was nothing to be ashamed about, but the two points lost in the Albany game would be sorely missed later on.

Still with control of their own fate in terms of the conference tournament, the Terriers began a three-game losing streak that would effectively end their postseason hopes. In a crushing 2-1 loss at Northeastern University, the Terriers went down early and had plenty of chances late, but fell victim to some questionable calls and tough bounces. That loss was followed by a 3-0 defeat at the University of New Hampshire, a team that would ultimately sneak into the fourth and final playoff spot. Four days later, the Terriers ended their home winning streak and all hopes of the playoffs in a 2-1 loss to the University of Hartford. That game ended with junior Alan McNamara standing in the goal with the ball on his foot, but the goal was not awarded.

When the Terriers ended the season with a bittersweet, 5-2, win over the University of Vermont, Roberts was pleased with the win but frustrated that the Terriers waited so long to show the talent everyone knew was there all along.

Even with four talented seniors on their way out, the Terriers should enter next seasons with high expectations once again. But even so, after the season finale Roberts pointed out the team’s unwanted new position, and will emphasize it with his players now and in the fall.

‘We have a young team, and we have our work to do,’ Roberts said. ‘We’re obviously in the bottom half of the league now.’