Winners of seven of its past nine games, the Boston University men’s soccer team will look to continue its extended streak as it concludes the regular season on the road at America East Conference foe Binghamton University Saturday in Vestal, N.Y.
The Terriers (9-7, 5-1 America East) are coming off unquestionably their best offensive performance of the year – a 3-0 Senior Night throttling of the University of New Hampshire Wednesday at Nickerson Field.
The win marked the first time this season that BU has scored three or more goals this season, a feat it accomplished five times just last season. Additionally, paired with its 2-1 victory against the University at Albany on Oct. 22, it was also the first time that BU had consecutive multi-goal games.
For BU head coach Neil Roberts, it has been an incredible relief for his talented offense to catch fire at a critical juncture in the season.
“It is good to score some goals, especially because they are a tough team obviously to score against and they have had our number for a while,” Roberts said after the win on Wednesday. “So it is good to be able to score goals and I thought for the most part we had control of it in the second half.”
The Terriers’ recent offensive surge can at least be partially attributed to the reemergence of senior forward Ben Berube, who was the team’s co-leader in goals with eight in 2010.
Having been limited by injuries for several games in the middle of the season, Berube scored his first goal of the season in the win over Albany and followed suit with another goal against New Hampshire.
Berube feels that, in addition to himself, his team has started to gel on the front line.
“It is the end of the season so it is tough to say we are clicking now, I think we have clicked — I don’t know,” Berube said Wednesday. “It is kind of hard to explain it just happened, but it is a good thing that it happened.”
Even though the Terriers’ offense was stuck in the proverbial neutral gear for much of the season, with a mere nine goals in their first 11 games, the defense managed to keep the team in many of their games, a trend that has not faltered even with the offensive kick-start.
Since the start of October, the BU defense has given up just two goals and currently sports a 0.75 goals against average, a figure that puts it first among all America East teams.
Now sitting in sole possession of first in the America East stands, the Terriers will face off against one of the conference’s worst teams in the Bearcats (4-10-2).
Binghamton has yet to win a conference game this season, though it has two ties to its record, and overall, it has not won a game since its 2-1 victory over Syracuse University on Sept. 27, a win that brought it within a game of .500 at 4-5.
Since then, the Bearcats have gone winless in seven consecutive games, five of which were losses, and have been out-scored in that period by a resounding 12-3 margin.
The Binghamton offense is predicated around forward Jake Keegan, whose five goals and four assists are both team-highs. Furthermore, Keegan’s 14 points account for roughly 33 percent of Binghamton’s season point total.
Keegan’s front line partner, forward Luke Halberg, ranks second on the team in goals, assists and points with three, two and eight, respectively.
Despite the Terriers’ recent string of success and the Bearcats’ relative futility over the month of October, Roberts knows that there are no givens and that his team has to focus on finishing its season strong.
“We have one game left to play,” he said. “We have been doing well on the road and we are going to a place we haven’t had a lot of success. I think we will be ready to play on Saturday, get our three points, and win the league.”
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