Soccer is a team sport, but it would be impossible to talk about the Boston University men’s soccer team’s five-game winning streak without focusing on the player responsible for all five victories &- junior forward Ben Berube, who has scored the game-winner in every game the Terriers have played since Sept. 24.
“I’m playing forward now, and I get the ball a lot more,” Berube said. “I’m staying hungry. Just because I scored in one game doesn’t mean anything, I’ve got to keep working hard. They’ve been pretty easy, so I’ve got to give the credit to [junior forward Stephen Knox], especially tonight, and everybody else &- they’re doing a great job.”
Against the University of Vermont on Wednesday, Berube took four shots in the first half alone, the first two sailing high of the net and the next two being saved capably by Catamount goalkeeper David Ramada. The Terriers went into the second half locked in a tense 0-0 tie that seemed ready to open up in their favor if they could maintain the offensive pressure.
Nine minutes into the second half, Knox broke down the right side of the field with Berube cutting through the middle. Knox found Berube with a perfectly placed pass inside Vermont’s box. Berube one-timed the ball past Ramada from point-blank range and then performed an impressive celebratory backflip along the goal line.
Berube’s game-winners have come in various ways &-
some redirects from close range, a free kick from the top of the box against the University of Rhode Island on Sept. 24 &- but before the URI game, he did not have a single tally on the season. All six of his goals have come since he was moved from midfield to forward when BU coach Neil Roberts sat senior forward Aaron O’Neal out against URI.
“We actually were short on forwards, and Ben’s short, so we figured it’d be a good combination,” Roberts said of the decision to move Berube to the front line. “We knew that Ben can go at people and cause problems for the defense, and we’re coming into a part of our season where a lot of the teams we’re playing against are big, not real mobile defenders, so that combination would help Ben and help us. It’s worked out well, but you’ve still got to finish your chances and Ben’s obviously doing that. He’s creating chances for himself.”
Goals aren’t scored in a vacuum, of course, and Knox’s two assists on Wednesday were just as important to the eventual Terrier victory as Berube’s effort. His vision on the right side of the field has complemented Berube’s speed well, and the pair has combined with O’Neal, who scored his sixth goal of the year on Wednesday, to make the Terrier front line truly formidable in the last few weeks.
“You can’t underestimate what [Knox] is doing out there,” Roberts said. “He’s really causing some problems. If we could get that going on the left side as well, we could be real dangerous. Knox’s making it a lot easier for the guys in front [O’Neal and Berube] because he’s just really a handful out there.”
Berube leads America East in game-winners with five. Vermont’s Nick O’Neill ranks second with four, but the Catamounts have yet to string more than three wins together this year, let alone get the game-winning goal off the foot of the same player five times in a row.
As the Terriers look to extend their unbeaten streak in conference play against the University of Maryland-Baltimore County on Friday, they will certainly be hoping for more heroics from the 5-foot-7 midfielder-turned-forward.
“Right now Ben’s on fire, so we just try to do our best to find him when we can,” Knox said.
