The 20th ranked University of Tampa men’s soccer team has started off the season with a bang.
While starting off the 2013 fall season with an undefeated record, UT’s men’s soccer team is looking forward to have more consistency with game play and improve throughout the season to make it to the national championships, a team goal.
“We’re the kind of team that should play a high tempo for the whole game, but at certain times we drop off,” said junior Tyler Blackwood, “if we play a bad team, we play at a bad tempo.”
The first two games were away against Clayton State and Coker in Morrow, Georgia. “The first games of the season are hard to start with road games,” said Blackwood, knowing there are only seven home games throughout the season. The Clayton State game was a tie ending 2-2 with two overtimes and the second game against Coker was a 4-0 shutout.
After the first game of the season against Clayton State, the men’s soccer team believes they could have won or lost the match, but a tie overall was ideal. “I think Clayton State stole a win from us really,” said junior Andrew Clare, “in the second game it was frustrating, their game plan was really hard to break down.”
Coach Adrian Bush was not pleased with their first home game. “I was disappointed in the performance tonight,” said Bush, “pleased with the result, but disappointed in the quality of play.” Bush thinks that discipline is the biggest area for improvement. Discipline wise, the speed of play and tempo could be a lot faster. According to Bush, the team has given up some pretty poor fouls that lead to cards and other opportunities for teams to score.
“It’s not many times you can win 4-0 and not be happy with how your team played, but I think we’re a much better team in possession. I think we have to play a lot smarter. But with that being said we are 2-0-1, ranked number 20 in the country and we have got a lot of very, very tough games ahead of us.”
Coach Bush is not looking down the road to other games, but has the team focus on the next game at hand. The players only have the thoughts about what they want to achieve out of the next game that they put all of their effort into.
The team this fall has plenty of fresh faces that the other players are going to help get acquainted to play at the college level. “We have about twenty plus freshman coming in and a lot of new players, so I think the team cohesion, seeing how that plays out and getting to know the new boys. I think we’re already gelling as a team as you can tell by our results,” said Blackwood.
Even though the team is doing exceptionally well statistically, the team still has goals they would like to accomplish this season. “The goal is to go undefeated, we are taking it one game at a time,” said junior Alex Knaggs, “while our next game at Barry is going to be a tough game, hopefully we can keep our streak undefeated.”
The men’s soccer team next home game is Saturday, September 21st against Nova Southeastern.
Michelle Speaker can be reached at michelle.speaker@spartans.ut.edu