Brockport/Geneseo Weekend

It has been a long and emotional weekend for all of the boys. We opened conference play against two of the tougher teams in the league, Geneseo and Brockport. Anyone who has ever played in a SUNYAC game knows that these games are like no other. The physicality and intensity is through the roof and if you don’t come prepared then it is likely that you will be in for a rough ride. That is exactly what happened to us on Friday.

The last time we saw Brockport was when they were celebrating on our field with a SUNYAC championship. That was last year after they had beaten us in pens and most of us hadn’t forgotten it. We talked and talked about what it means to get off to a good start in conference and how we owed them something from last year. For some reason we really weren’t there mentally or physically and we got everything that we deserved and more.

From the first moment Brockport took it to us and we couldn’t get anything going. They beat us to every loose ball, won every 50-50 and seemed faster than us. They outworked us and gave us a lesson in how to play with heart and intensity. After 35 minutes we were down 2-0 courtesy of two long range strikes from their center back. Both goals were absolutely preventable, we didn’t clear our lines from a set piece and we gave them too much time on the ball around our box and then the second was a result of atrocious marking on our part from a throw in.

The scary thing is that we could have gone into the half tied up at 2-2. We had two golden chances to equalize or at least pull them back to within one and we wasted them. In conference play every goal is a huge momentum swinger and we had a chance to get a foot hold back in the game.

At half time we talked about raising the intensity and some of the older had their say about the performances we were seeing out there. A lot of us knew we needed to look at ourselves in the mirror and ask ourselves if we were representing everyone to the best of our ability. The worrying part of this is that after all the talk at half time we came out in the second half and were arguably worse than the first. They put another one in after an hour and it was over for us. We didn’t have the heart to come back. Coach decided to empty the bench for the final half an hour and some people went out there and made some noise. There are some people on our team with big reputations who didn’t live up to them on Friday. It was the people who came in at the end who put some of us to shame.

It was a long night for us and I personally didn’t sleep at all because I couldn’t get it out of my mind. I was embarrassed and felt I had let the team down because of my own performance and I know a few others felt this way too. It is a good sign that we were hurting so badly after a loss and we know we don’t want to feel that way again.

The next day didn’t get any easier for us with Geneseo coming into town. They are one of the most physically tough teams around and we have never had an easy game against them.

We didn’t need any motivation or any pumping up, we knew what we needed to do. Coach mentioned that this was as close to a must win game as it comes but I really believe that this was a must win game. To go 0-2 on this weekend would have been a disaster and it would really hurt our chances of hosting SUNYAC’s.

We didn’t start too well and Geneseo played vertical and tried to put us under pressure. After about 10-15 minutes we started to move the ball a little bit and possess with some composure, something we have lacked lately. When we kept the ball moving they couldn’t touch us and we had times were we played them off the park.
With heir direct style they put our goalie, Andy, under pressure but he has grown a lot in confidence this year and is a totally different player from last year. He stood strong and took a couple of hits from them but they just bounced off of him.
Towards the end of the half we got a free kick on the edge of their box and I hit one off the crossbar. Hamilton was looking for the rebound and he headed one in to take a load off our shoulders. Going into half time up 1-0 is something we are used to this season. We usually then sit back and absorb the pressure but Geneseo is a team that you don’t want to do that against. Their direct and physical approach can pay off if you let them do it. We came out for the second really well and pinned them back in their own half. They couldn’t get out and we probably should have had one or two penalties awarded. In the end we were awarded a free kick which I put in, I catch a bit of stick from Waterbury about my free kick taking and although he is probably right it gets on my nerves and he knows it so I was happy to stick one away. After the second goal we didn’t let up and kept them on their heels and it paid off when Googz went on a great run and hit Shaughnessy with a pass, he made a fantastic turn and pulled one back from the end line, Byrnes dummied the ball and Hamilton slid in his second of the game.

Although some of the usual players get the credit and the headlines I think a few unfamiliar names made the difference in this game. Erik Hakim played the most minutes of his season and was a great physical presence in there, also Joe Aratari or Tuna as he is known, was a surprise coming in off the bench but he was outstanding. His pace and tenacity caused problems and he certainly didn’t look out of place. Last of all a special mention has to go to Ryan Connors. He replaced Bart at center back and although you are always going to miss a player of Bart’s standard, Connors was very good in both games. Despite the score line against Brockport he played well and was even better against Geneseo.

It’s a positive sign that players like Tuna, Erik, Connors, Caden and Greene are playing well and getting minutes because they are the future of the program. We are going to lose a lot of excellent players after this year and they have some big shoes to fill but everyone has the confidence that they can do that.

We leave on Thursday for Cortland and Oswego. This is going to be another tough weekend and we have to start making 2-0 weekends part of our season. Oswego has beaten us twice in the last two years and we just can’t figure them out but I am confident that this time will be different. Despite us not hitting our stride yet I know that this team can make it to the NCAA tournament and then make some noise there, it is just a matter of showing up mentally to every game.

Look-a-likes

I thought I would do a little midweek blog because we don’t have a game until Friday and I don’t want all the blogs to be game recaps.

One thing that has been talked about several times this year is our new pictures for the online roster. There are some suspect fashion statements going on throughout the team ranging from Payne, Lojo and Chad’s facial hair to myself and Hamilton’s attempts at haircuts.

By far the funniest photo online is Payne’s.

His uncanny resemblance to Edward Norton in American History X is a great find.




Lojo is going for the so called Rick Ross look.








Hamilton is a Neymar attempt gone seriously wrong.







Then there is Byrnes who not only looks like Lance Bass but acts strangely like him too.







Levine and Stepjan both look the same and spend all their time together so it’s hard to differentiate.





Binder is our answer to Drake.






Andy looks remotely like a child superstar.






If you have any other suggestions comment on the blog.

Skidmore

Last night we travelled down to Saratoga to play Skidmore College. We beat them 3-2 last year at home after being 2-0 after 20 minutes so we knew that would be on their minds and in their team talk.

We changed our lineup for the game mainly because of health issues concerning Hamilton and Bandov. Hamilton didn’t even travel with the squad and that was a bit of a blow because he is such a hard worker, it is always nice to have someone like him. Joey Jones and Tom Greene came into the lineup and it must have been a big occasion for them making their first collegiate starts. Tommy even had his own fan club in the stands with his high school team attending and making some noise for him.

After the last few games we have talked about the importance of scoring early and often. We are confident that most teams will not be able to score against us because we defend so well but you have to score to be able to win games.

Skidmore had a nice crowd there and they made themselves known with some creative chants and chirps. I think for most of us that sort of thing makes us play better and we started the game with some great passing and moving. We knocked the ball around smoothly and got in behind them. They had to resort to fouling us and we got a lot of free kicks. We are extremely dangerous from set pieces because usually Bart or Lojo get on the end of them but our first goal came from JJ. He was one of the smallest players in the box but he scored a bullet header and was smiling from ear to ear with his first ever goal. It’s always nice to see someone score their first goal because you never forget it. We were talking about it on the way home and we all remember our first goal, how we scored it and who it was against.

After the goal we kind of took our foot off the gas and they pushed forward a little more and they were receiving what we felt were very generous calls from the referee. We saw out the half as even if teams do have possession against us they aren’t generally dangerous because we defend well.

At half time we talked about getting the next goal and how big that would be but it didn’t go the way we wanted. They changed up their formation and they took away our extra midfielder which really changed the face of the game. We did have opportunities to keep the ball but we lacked composure and confidence and needlessly gave it away. In the end we finished the game out and got another win to go into conference play undefeated.

I think this is a big psychological boost to us and the longer we go undefeated the better. SUNYAC’s is a totally different game to the non-conference games and we really need to bring our game every week because everyone’s goal at the start of the season is to win the conference and we are due a title.

We play Brockport on Friday and they are the conference champs so it’s a big game for us, we are aiming to stay undefeated and hopefully that can happen.

Castleton State

This past Wednesday we hosted Castleton State. We play them every year and usually they are a tough game but in the end we have too much for them to handle. Our troubles in front of goal hurt us a lot in this game. We had so many chances to score in this game but we lacked composure inside the 18. I think if we had scored an early goal then we would have gone on to score 3 or 4 but the longer it went on the more pressure we felt to score. We all thought Byrnes would continue his hot streak in front of goal but he blasted one straight at the goalie from 3 yards out. As the game progressed we started pushing more numbers forward and we left ourselves exposed a few times, one time inparticular they had a clear breakaway but the ref pulled it back for an earlier foul by Lojo (John LoGuirato) and he let us off the hook big time. We went into overtime and some of us got the feeling of here we go again because we have played so many overtime games in the last few years. We dominated again in the extra periods and the pressure finally paid off when Bart scored a magnificent header from a corner. It was a big win for us but we cannot keep letting games like these become close, when we have the chances we have to finish them otherwise teams will punish us.

Baruch

The next day we played against Baruch, we didn’t know much about them but we felt that if we could handle playing against Manhattanville then we could handle anyone at the time. A bit like the Norwich game, this one didn’t exactly go to plan. We looked tired from the day before and played very slowly against a team that looked willing to sit back and let us attack. We made mistakes that I don’t think we would have if we would have been fresh. We went into half time a goal down after they scored a nice free kick. This was the first goal we had conceded this season and it was our first challenge to come from a goal down to try and win. The 2nd half was a much better display from us, we had a heated talk at half time and it seemed to light the fire under some players.

3 minutes into the 2nd half (Danny) Byrnes scored off a nice pass from Bandov. You could tell that he doesn’t score often because of his terrible celebration. Once we got one goal we knew that we could go on to win it but the goal didn’t come immediately like we thought it would. After probing away for a while we got a corner that Bart (Misiak) wanted taken early, so I did and he got a head on it but the goalie managed to save it right into the path of (Pat) Shaughnessy who scored one of his trademark close range goals. The rest of the half wasn’t the prettiest from us and we were slightly disappointed that we didn’t kill the game off like we have been able to do in past years but a win is a win.

Manhattanville

After a short break we travelled downstate to Manhattanville College for a tournament that they were hosting. We were desperate to do well in it because of the disappointment at Norwich. A lot of our players are from the area around Manhattanville and so it was a great trip for people to see friends and family. It is hard for athletes sometimes because they don’t have the spare time to visit home like regular students do and so trips like this can do wonders for morale. Our first game was against the hosts Manhattanville, we knew they were going to be good but we didn’t realize how good they would be. The first half was an eve affair and in some ways we probably edged the momentum. We managed to score a fortunate goal after Stejpan Bandov raced in behind their defenders and crossed it to Mike Payne. Payne then took a shot that bounced off the ground and somehow beat the goalkeeper, it was a huge goal and it was only around 20 minutes into the game. Payne has already scored three times this year and he can be a big player for us if he stays healthy.

The 2nd half was almost like two different teams came out as they absolutely dominated us from the start to the finish. We started to sit back and just try and absorb the pressure but they just kept coming and their movement off the ball was tremendous. They had some terrific individual players who caused us a lot of problems. In the end Andy (Heighington), our goalie, had a brilliant game and so did our defenders. It took a complete team effort to pull out the win because our backs were against the wall for a long time. Players like JJ (Joey Jones), Chad (Shennett) and Matt Martin gave us some good minutes in positions that they weren’t used to.

Norwich

In the first two games of the season we managed to score a combined 9 goals. I put that down to the standard of opposition that we played, both were below 500. teams. Since then it has been an uphill battle to score goals. We travelled to Norwich University last week, usually we come out on top against them but playing at their home field it a very difficult experience. They play on one of the smallest fields allowed and the grass isn’t exactly in great condition. Two years ago when I was a sophomore we went over and took a beating from them, which was one of the worst performances I have been a part of here at Plattsburgh. With the memories of that performance still in most of the senior classes minds we really wanted to pay them back for that. Unfortunately it didn’t go according to plan. Norwich had a game plan that they executed to a tee. They had decided they wanted to pack it in on defense and challenge us to break them down and we couldn’t. Their goalie had a great game and our attack did not. We ended up tying the game 0-0 and now our senior class is going to leave having never won a game at Norwich. That is a huge disappointment for some of us because we pride ourselves on being the best and having many teams hate playing against us but Norwich have a great coach and they do what they have to do to get the better of us.

New Blog - the season so far

Hello all, I am Chris Taylor and I play for the men's soccer team here at Plattsburgh State. I am a journalism major and so I have taken over the blog from Coach Waterbury in order to get some more writing experience. Hopefully I can do a better job than he did and give you a little insight into our team after games and when we are on road trips.

I thought I would just give a little recap of the how the season is going so far since this is my first post and we are 6 games into the season.
At the moment we are still undefeated with a record of 5-0-1 and we hope to keep that record up going into conference play.

If anyone has any question just comment on the blog post and I will be happy to answer them on behalf of the team.

I will start the blog off with a short recap of the last few games.