The Heartbreak Kids

Four games into the 2011 season, the best – and maybe only – way to describe the Boston University men’s soccer team’s experience is “shoulda, coulda, woulda.”

Friday night at Nickerson Field, the team should have beaten Seton Hall.

The team could have beaten Seton Hall if it wasn’t for an unlucky bounce or two.

The team would have beaten Seton Hall if it did, as BU coach Neil Roberts puts it, “the little things.”

“It is the very little things that are very correctable, whether it is just closing down or just getting on the right side of somebody, or just pressuring or putting forth a little bit more effort,” Roberts said. “We are not doing the little things right now.”

The game was an action-packed one, as eight of the 19 BU (1-3) shots were on goal, and the Pirates (2-1-1) got six of their 15 close enough to require a save. It was the last one, though, that did the Terriers in.

After a chippy 90 minutes of play that saw five yellow cards handed out and just two goals scored, the teams started a ten-minute overtime period knotted at one.

Then, less than seven minutes into the period, Seton Hall defender Joe Baker crossed the ball to forward Max Garcia, Seton Hall’s greatest offensive threat.

Garcia didn’t get a good foot on the ball, but he didn’t need to. The ball bounced at an odd, unexpected angle off his shin and spun into the goal as BU freshman goalkeeper Nick Thomson, expecting a more average shot, went the other way.

Letting two goals get by in one game, Thomson was visibly frustrated, and understandably so after allowing just one in his previous two games this season.

“He is a competitor,” Roberts said. “He is a goalkeeper that doesn’t like to lose. Like a lot of the guys in there they feel the same: they should have got a better result.

“He is a young kid, but he is very hungry for the game, and very committed to the game, so he is not happy.”

Earlier, it was another freshman – speedy forward Dominique Badji – who looked like he would be the focal point of the game. In the tenth minute, Badji headed a cross from freshman defender Sanford Spivey to the back of the net.

Badji’s first collegiate goal was the first in over 210 minutes of game play for the Terriers, and would go on to be the only one of this contest for BU.

“I had a great ball from Sanford and I just did my job and put it in,” Badji said.

The score and momentum remained in favor of BU for a majority of the game, despite many BU chances to expand the lead.

Senior forward Ben Berube couldn’t capitalize on a one-on-goalie situation in the 29th minute, shooting the ball just to the left of the goal, and sophomore midfielder Vicente Colmenares had a goal in the 37th minute negated by his being offside.

Those misses opened the door for Seton Hall, which tied the game in the 60th minute. In a situation eerily similar to the one that produced BU’s goal, midfielder Damian Bziukiewicz crossed the ball from the right side to midfielder Giovanni Zammiello, who used his head to put it past Thomson.

The Terriers and Pirates all seemed shocked at the goal and it proved to be a huge momentum shift that elicited jubilant reactions from the Pirates both on the field and on the bench.

“It is just that we are not committed to putting the energy into the game that you need to be successful,” Roberts said. “They know. We just have some habits we need to break…Until we do that we are going to learn the hard way.”

The loss means that Roberts is still in search of his 300th career win, a milestone Badji says the team certainly wants him to have.

“We really want Coach to get this win real bad,” Badji said. “We are going to work really hard during the next game to give it to him.

“He deserves it, he has been here so long, and he has worked hard. He deserves this one.”

The Terriers’ next shot to make Roberts the next Mr. 300 in college soccer will come on Friday at 7 p.m., when they wrap up their three-game homestand against Big East teams and host University of Connecticut at Nickerson Field.