The Boston University men’s soccer team stretched its winning streak to four games on Saturday with a 2-0 victory over the University of Hartford, and in another moment of consistency, junior forward Ben Berube scored the game-winning goal for the Terriers (7-3-1, 2-0-0 America East).
Berube’s goal came at 32:23 when freshman midfielder Derek McCaffrey sent a long pass ahead from BU’s box.
With no Hartford (3-6-0, 1-1-0 AE) defenders in position to stop him, Berube beat goalkeeper Luke Citriniti for his fifth goal of the season.
Part of the reason Berube had space to work with on the goal was that he had outmaneuvered the Hartford defense, and it appeared that he was offsides on the play. No call was made, though, but Hartford contested the issue.
“I’m not exactly sure if I was offside or not,” Berube said. “I don’t think I was, because I’m pretty sure I was on our half and if you’re inside your own half, then it’s not offside. Luckily he didn’t call it, so that’s all that matters, and it was just a clear breakaway so I just put it in.”
“The coaches said to me that when the ball was played Ben kind of came back and then went forward,” said BU coach Neil Roberts. “It was a long ball and it was traveling a lot, so by the time everyone looked up and looked at Ben, then he was in an offside position. And we knew that [Hartford] did that, they always play very high, so we knew we were going to get some of those. The linesman was right there.”
Four minutes after Berube’s tally, the Terriers added to their lead. Senior midfielder Ryan Shea sent a feed from sophomore midfielder Ade Akinsanya into the right post.
With the Hawks’ defense off-balance, senior midfielder Ben Havey controlled the rebound and sent it past Citriniti.
Hartford responded with intensity, nearly cutting BU’s lead in half just three minutes later with a low shot from close range on BU redshirt freshman goalkeeper Brandon Briggs. Briggs made the save, but the rebound bounced to Hartford forward Patrick Boucher, who rolled a shot towards what would have been an open corner of the net, had junior defender Colin Henry not been there to clear the ball away.
Briggs made four saves in his fourth shutout of the season.
The Hawks, who last Saturday beat the University at Albany 1-0 thanks to an 89th-minute goal by Boucher, outnumbered the Terriers in the shots category, 14-13. Despite that slight edge Saturday, Hartford has had trouble putting the ball in the net this season, scoring just three goals in their last six games. The 2-0 loss to BU was the fourth time it had been shut out in 2010.
Despite the win &- an important three-point conference victory &- neither the team nor Roberts was entirely happy with the way they played. Early in the first half, the BU defense gave Hartford a number of offensive opportunities because of sloppy passing and lethargic play.
“I think that we had so much time that we gave some poor passes, and they came down on us,” Roberts said. “Their attacks in the first half were mainly through us giving them the ball and then them coming. Our shape wasn’t great, and we’ve got to straighten it out because we’re going to get burnt.”
Hartford did lead in shots after the first half, 8-6, and despite the end result, Roberts said the team has room to improve in the areas of clearing balls from around the net and giving up free kicks late in the game.
“You’ve got to let them do their thing right now,” Roberts said. “We’ve got to get back Monday and realize that we’ve got to do better if we want to win this league. We’ve got two huge games coming up this week [against the University of Vermont and University of Maryland-Baltimore County], and we really can’t play like we did today.”
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