The Boston University men’s soccer team will try to return to its winning ways tonight against the University of Rhode Island in the final game of a three-game home stand.
The Terriers (4-1-3), winless in their last three outings, will be searching for identity in tonight’s contest-their last non-league bout. BU opens its conference schedule this Saturday at the University of Maryland-Baltimore County.
“I think we’re in a good place. We’re young and trying to find ourselves as a team and get an identity because we don’t have one yet,” said BU coach Neil Roberts. “We still need work offensively but I think we’re getting better. Every game we get a better understanding of what our guys are doing.”
URI (2-2-3) won the University of Massachusetts-Amherst Invitational Sunday after battling the University of Hartford to a 1-1 tie and winning Friday. No. 22 UMass and the University of Vermont rounded out the field in the four-team tournament.
“We’re both coming off ties and I think both teams just wanna try to get their guys going in the right direction,” Roberts said.
URI senior forward Jeffery Gonsalves scored three goals and assisted another in last weekend’s tournament. He, along with junior Lukasz Tumicz (one goal, two assists), red-shirt senior Kevin Algozer and sophomore Adam Howart, were named to the All-Tournament Team
“I can’t speak for the Rams, but they’re playing well,” Roberts said. “[Tonight’s] a game where we wanna try to get as many of our questions answered as possible by Saturday. We’re still looking at things in our game plan and players and stuff that we’ll hope to have figured out a little better by the time we start our conference.”
The answers Roberts is searching for lie within BU’s offensive schemes as well as the Terriers’ ability to close out games. In the first two games of the current home stand, BU has allowed goals to its opponent with less than six minutes remaining in the second half. Despite two late breakdowns, Roberts is confident in his defense.
“Our defense has been consistent from day one,” Roberts said. “Offense has always been a little bit more difficult and we’ve spent a lot more time working on defense. There’s only so many hours in the day that guys together so we have to pick and choose what we work on.
“We thought coming into the season that we’d need to be a lot sharper defensively,” he continued. “And I think it’s coming. Our experienced players are more in the back and the newer guys are in the midfield and front.”
Two of those newer players are sophomore Petur Sigurdsson-who saw limited time last year due to a sports hernia-and classmate Neil Hlavaty. Both have gotten a quality amount of chances in the offensive end, but in BU’s last two matches they’ve been contained well. That being said, the duo has played very good soccer for most of the season. Thus far, Sigurdsson leads the team in shots (19), goals (4) and points (9). Hlavaty isn’t far behind. The Lombard, Ill., native is second on the team with 11 shots and has two goals and an assist.
“Working on our offense has been our goal for this last week or so, changing things around a little see what’s gonna work so by the time our conference schedule starts we want to be ready,” Roberts said.
But don’t assume that the Terriers are overlooking URI just to get to conference play, especially after having dropped out of the latest NSCAA rankings.
“I’m sure they’re disappointed,” Roberts said of his players, “but when you lose and draw in a week and that’s gonna happen. We’ve just gotta keep working on what we’re doing and things will go our way.”