When a season begins, regardless of the sport in question, it's to be expected that teams may not perform at their absolute best. Months of practice and preparation are helpful and necessary, but it doesn't go too far in preparing a team for a full-speed game against tough competition. Mistakes, some extremely costly, are almost something of an inevitability in these types of situations.
For the Boston University men's soccer team, this occurrence was all too evident as it played to a 1-1 tie against the University of Massachusetts-Amherst at Nickerson Field on a hot and muggy Wednesday night.
Despite maintaining and controlling possession for much of the game, miscues and general sloppiness were something of a reoccurring theme for the Terriers.
"We did not play well at all in the first half, whether it was jitters," said BU coach Neil Roberts. "We gave the ball away. We were very stiff. We just couldn't get out of our own way."
Particularly prone to these jitters and miscues Wednesday night was the Terriers' defensive third, an area of the field where even the tiniest of mistakes, whether they come from opposing pressure or lackadaisical play, can be magnified greatly.
"It was difficult back there. The guys were under a lot of pressure, and especially in close games, you can't make mistakes and they'll get better at it," Roberts said. "We've got three very good players back there."
One sloppy play in the backfield proved to be exceptionally costly for BU. In the opening minutes of the second half, freshman midfielder Kelvin Madzongwe badly misplayed a header back to redshirt freshman goalkeeper Brandon Briggs. UMass striker Bryant Craft stepped in the direction of the slow pass and capitalized on the mistake, evening the score at one apiece.
"We gave up the soft goal and you just can't do that in these games," Roberts said. "You give up goals like that and it's going to be difficult, and especially early on in the season when you're not scoring goals, that puts you in a bad spot."
The costly miscue by Madzongwe was not something that Roberts or other members of the team felt should be any sort of overall reflection of his abilities as a player.
"Kelvin, even though he made a mistake, is a very talented young player," said Roberts.
In a game that was virtually defined by mistakes rather than accomplishments, the play of the freshmen (Madzongwe included) was judged very fairly by coaches and players alike, especially considering the fact that those who are not used to the pace and play of collegiate soccer would be the likely suspects to be forced into blunders.
"I thought that the freshmen played well," Roberts said. "We made the mistake in the back, but I thought overall they did pretty good."
Even in the face of adversity, in the wake of Madzongwe's mishandled drop pass that sent the game into a tie, the team responded well and cut down on the errors, playing with a greater sense of urgency altogether.
"I thought they responded," Roberts said. "They didn't go into a shell. In fact, I thought they took the game over."
UMass's style of play, a fairly erratic one defined largely by long balls played into the box, was certainly another culpable party in the sloppy play from the Terriers.
"It's a very difficult team to play against, particularly the first time out, with those balls bouncing," Roberts said. "They're not really trying to win it. They're just trying to make sure that you don't win it."
Even though these mistakes did not result in a loss for the Terriers, the overwhelming feeling was that they played a large part in what could be called a blown opportunity, particularly against a UMass team that BU hasn't defeated in six years.
"I wouldn't call this a good tie," Roberts said. "It was a very disappointing tie. We thought we left some points out there. Whenever you give up a soft goal like that and end up with a tie, obviously it's disappointing."
The players echoed their coach's sentiment on that issue, also seeing these fundamental errors as a primary reason that the team wasn't able to capitalize against the Minutemen last night.
"We let two points walk away," said junior midfielder Michael Bustamante, the Terriers' lone goal-scorer.
The tie and the miscues that led to it were obviously painful to players and coaches alike, but in their minds, it was something that should not be dwelled upon, especially with such a talented cast of players looking to recapture the America East title this season.
"This is a new group, we're trying to get the personality of it," Roberts said. "Hopefully the second half was a little more of what you're going to see in the future."
This is an account occasionally used by the Daily Free Press editors to post archived posts from previous iterations of the site or otherwise for special circumstance publications. See authorship info on the byline at the top of the page.
