The Binghamton University women’s soccer team has played five of its first six games on the road, and although it returned from Western New York with two solid road wins last weekend, it’s about time it played on the green grass of the Bearcats Sports Complex once again.
The team is scheduled to face off against the Temple University Owls at the Bearcats Sports Complex tonight. The Owls are fresh off a 4-3 win over Bearcats conference rival University at Albany, bringing the squad to a 4-1-1 record. Out of the six matches, only one was played on the road, and it was the team’s only loss. The Owls have already matched their win total of the 2008 season, when they finished 4-11-4. None of those four were road wins. Temple’s last road victory was Sept. 21, 2007.
“We’re looking forward to playing at home,” said Bearcats head coach Sarah McClellan. “It’s only our second home game this year, and a Friday night game is always fun to play under the lights.”
Temple belongs to the Atlantic 10 Conference, a division that usually contains powerful sports programs.
“Temple is a good team,” McClellan said. “They’re out of the Atlantic 10, a strong conference. We’d really like to come out with a strong performance Friday night and keep moving in the right direction as we get ready for conference play.”
America East Conference play begins on Sunday, Sept. 27 as the Bearcats travel to Boston University for a 1 p.m. match. The Bearcats women’s soccer team has always had trouble handling the Boston Terriers, losing their last five matches. It will be a very difficult task to take down the Terriers this year, but anything can happen.
Binghamton has beaten the Terriers only once in eight matchups, and that was in 2004, the year that the Bearcats took home the America East crown. But McClellan and the Bearcats aren’t scared.
“It’s our first conference game, against one of the top conference teams, but we’re not gonna be afraid of that,” she said. “We’re gonna stay committed to the process. We’ll have a full week of practice prior to going onto that trip, and we’ll be ready; we’ll be confident and we’ll be ready to play our game.”
The Bearcats have compiled a 2-3-1 non-conference record thus far, including two consecutive shutout wins last weekend against Niagara University and University at Buffalo. While Binghamton’s last two games saw its first two wins, Boston’s only two wins came in its first two games, as it has slid into a five-game winless streak and a 2-3-2 record.
According to McClellan, the game plan is relatively simple.
“The key [is to] be sharper in our defensive surge, organization and finishing in our attack,” she said. “And those seem obvious things, but the midfield play for both teams is quite good every time we play them. What it comes down to is how organized are we when Boston’s attacking, and how committed are we to score when we penetrate their area. So if we do those things, we should be happy after the game.”