Did you hear that?
That was the collectively held breath of the Boston University men’s soccer team being released. They have no chance of being that team. And that’s a very good thing.
If the Terriers hadn’t won Wednesday, they would have been in the unenviable position of traveling to Orono, Maine, to face the 0-16 Black Bears in a must-win situation. And with the weird twists and turns this season has taken for BU, who knows what could have happened. Fortunately the Terriers can now make the five-hour journey to the Pine Tree State knowing that they’re going to play at least one more game.
BU (8-4-4, 3-3-1) currently sits at fifth place in America East and can’t move any higher, no matter what Saturday’s result. They can, however, drop to sixth with a loss or tie and a Stony Brook University win. The Black Bears (0-7-0, 0-16-0), who were eliminated two weeks ago, will be playing for pride.
Maine’s pride will try to eliminate potential history at Alumni Field. If the Terriers were to defeat the Black Bears, Maine would become the first America East team in the conference’s 17-year history to finish the season having lost every game they played. Seven other times a team has lost all of their league games-the most recent being Northeastern University in 1998-but never every single contest.
“It’s kind of a game that we want to stay where we are in the conference,” said coach Neil Roberts. “It’s a scary game because they’re 0-16 and they’re not an 0-16 team. They’re gonna be doing everything they can to make sure they don’t go 0-17.”
If the Black Bears had one reason to be optimistic coming into the game, it’s the fact that BU is 0-1-2 against Maine over the past three seasons-the most recent bout between the clubs resulting in a 1-1 tie on Nickerson Field.
While BU already has stamped its ticket to the postseason, Roberts knows this can’t turn into the classic “let-down” game.
“I hope not, because we still want to get better,” Roberts said. “We want to keep getting better and we want to make sure that we can take our game to a higher level.”
One of the areas in which the Terriers should improve is their ability to score. Through 16 games, Maine has allowed 42 goals and scored only nine. That’s an average of 2.58 goals allowed per game. The Black Bears have been out-shot 304-92 and have only 49 corner kicks to their opponents’ 102. While an offensive breakout would be an exciting way to conclude a regular season plagued with the inability to score multiple times, Roberts just wants the “W.”
“The goal is to have one more than they have,” Roberts said. “If we can get three more goals than them, that’s great but if we can only get one more that’s fine too. They’ve had some struggles, but they’re not a bad team.”
On the flip side, BU has only allowed opponents to break the goal line 11 times this year-an average of 0.63 per game-which would set the record for the least goals allowed by a Terrier team in a single season.
Senior goalkeeper Zach Riffett is expected to get the start, but don’t be surprised if backup Hrafn Davidsson sees some playing time as well. The same holds true for most of BU’s starters, as Roberts will build confidence on the bench.
“Obviously we’ll play some more people than we usually do, but that shouldn’t have anything to do with our intensity,” Roberts said. “Some of the guys that are banged up won’t be playing. Derek [Puerta] was banged up in the Hartford game, so I don’t know what his status will be for [Saturday].”
No matter who takes the field for the Terriers, there’s got to be comfort in knowing that they’re not going to be that team.
“We just have to worry about ourselves and getting in the right mindset going into the tournament,” Roberts said.