The Boston University men’s soccer season is just around the corner, and despite its No. 2 preseason ranking in the America East preseason coaches’ poll, the team will look to pick up where it left off last year when it claimed its 11th America East regular season title.
Last year’s squad was young, as it featured many freshmen who played significant minutes throughout the season. These now-sophomores include goalkeeper Nick Thomson, defenders Sanford Spivey and Taylor Washington, midfielder Cameron Souri and forward Dominique Badji.
With another year of experience under their respective belts, the group of sophomores looks to be the core of this season’s team and will have to take on bigger roles than it did last year.
“Our key is going to be those guys growing up a little bit,” said BU coach Neil Roberts. “They got a lot of time last year and now will take more of a leadership role … It will be interesting to see. But those guys definitely have to play a huge role in what we do this year.”
While the sophomores make up most of what will be the starting lineup for the Terriers, one of the most crucial pieces to the team will be junior defender Kelvin Madzongwe. Madzongwe took home the America East Defender of the Year award last year, and at the end of last season Roberts said that Madzongwe was developing into a player “of a whole different level.”
Madzongwe figures to be the key piece to the BU defense, but Roberts will be happy to get back one of the key pieces to his offense in senior midfielder Michael Bustamante. Bustamante has been named to the First Team All-America East three times in his career at BU before being redshirted all of last season due to injury.
In his 51 games played with BU, Bustamante has tallied six goals and 23 assists, making him one of the most dangerous offensive weapons on the team. With Bustamante completely healthy now, Roberts is looking for the Chelsea native to make an impact on his team’s offense which only averaged 0.94 goals per game last season.
“I think he will help us in the midfield for sure,” Roberts said. “He is a talented attacking player so he should create a lot of chances for a lot of people.”
While Badji, who was the America East Rookie of the Year last year, will likely be one player Bustamante helps create chances for, BU has some new faces up front that could get in on the scoring.
The team also added three freshmen forwards and a transfer junior forward to its offense, but Roberts said he does not think there will be any one player who scores all of the goals for the Terriers this season.
“We are hoping that some of the guys are more experienced with Michael back and a lot more people are going to chip in as far as getting goals,” Roberts said. “I don’t think you are going to see one guy on our team be a huge goal scorer but we need contributions from a lot of people.”
BU will begin its season on Sunday in New York when it will scrimmage the United States Military Academy at West Point. The team’s first regular season game will be six days after that when it will take on No. 15 St. John’s University.
St. John’s will be the first of what should be a very difficult non-conference schedule for the Terriers this season. BU will face top opponents such as No. 1 University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, No. 4 University of Connecticut and No. 14 Boston College.
Roberts said the tough non-conference schedule is an opportunity, especially in a season in which his team is excluded from the America East tournament and can only make the NCAA tournament through an at-large bid.
“The schedule that we put together is probably non-conference one of the most challenging in the country,” Roberts said. “Having said that, it is a good thing for our guys because we have a lot of opportunities to get into the NCAA tournament.
“We have to play well against good teams but the opportunity is in front of us. If we didn’t have the schedule we had we would probably have no opportunity at all so. What we do in postseason is still as of right now up to us.”
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