M. soccer suffers first loss vs. UNH

On Saturday, the Boston University men’s soccer team did something that it had not done for 34 days, 816 hours or 48,960 minutes.

It lost a game.

The Terriers (9-4-1, 4-1 America East) fell 2-1 on the road to University of New Hampshire in double-overtime.

The Wildcats (6-3-5, 1-2-2 AE) broke a 1-1 tie in the 108th minute of the game when midfielder Steven Palumbo scored an unassisted goal that dealt the Terriers their first loss in AE conference play this season.

BU still retains its lead atop the conference standings as it stands a full four points ahead of a three-team group tied for second place.

For this Terriers team, the end of its six-game win streak was not brought about by poor defending or a lack of scoring opportunities up front, but rather it may have been a general lack of preparation, at least according to BU coach Neil Roberts.

“We had a good week of practice and we had a good plan going in,” Roberts said. “But I don’t think we were really ready to play, which was disappointing.”

After a scoreless first half in which the Terriers actually outshot the Wildcats 6-1, UNH midfielder Brad Hilton broke the deadlock, striking a ball from about 25 yards out past BU redshirt freshman goalkeeper Brandon Briggs to give UNH a 1-0 lead just four minutes into the second half.

Facing a second-half deficit against a stout Wildcat defense on the road, the Terriers responded six minutes later as freshman defender Derek McCaffrey headed in a pass from junior midfielder Michael Bustamante to even the match at one goal apiece. The goal was the first of McCaffrey’s collegiate career. The assist was Bustamante’s second of the season.

“It was a great run by him, it was a great ball by Mike Bustamante, so it was a good play all around,” Roberts said. “Derek, like we’ve said all along, in due time, is going to be a very good player.”

The hopes of extending the win streak to seven then vanished with Palumbo’s goal three minutes into the second overtime period.

For Roberts, the goal and the loss were exceptionally frustrating because any form of points &- i.e. a win or a tie &- would have been perfectly acceptable for a team that cannot afford to lose its standing at the top of the conference.

“We’ve got to be more mature and realize that a tie doesn’t hurt us,” Roberts said. “We fought for 108 minutes, and it was what it was and you move on, but we didn’t realize that and that was disappointing.”

An overall failure to capitalize on opportunities hurt the Terriers throughout a match that the team felt they predominantly controlled. The BU offense outshot UNH by a 17-9 margin in the match.

However, it ultimately proved to be hard to break through against a Wildcat defense that has only given up eight goals in a total of 14 games this season.

“They’re obviously a team that doesn’t give up a lot, but we created some chances,” Roberts said.

UNH senior goalkeeper Colin O’Donnell, the reigning AE Goalkeeper of the Year, recorded three saves.

In spite of the loss, coaches and players can take solace in the team’s performance in the second half, especially the manner in which the team responded to being down early in the second half.

“After we gave up the first goal, we really started playing well,” Roberts said. “We had control of the game pretty much the whole time. Both goals came off of our turnovers when we just gave the ball away in very dangerous parts of the field and obviously they capitalized on it.”

Roberts noted that one of BU’s goals is to be “a national-caliber team,” but moving forward into the crucial final two games of America East play, his team will have to learn from and improve upon what it did wrong on Saturday in order to achieve that.

“We’ve got to see the mistakes we made and the reasons why,” Roberts said. “I think that it’s disappointing, but the big thing is we’ve got to move on and learn from it.”