The Yankees made it to the playoffs having to play without Robinson Cano, Hideki Matsui and Gary Sheffield for half a season. The Bearcats can only hope they are as lucky.
Tomorrow, the Binghamton Men’s soccer team (3-5-3, 1-0-0 AE), playing without arguably its three best players, will continue its America East schedule by hosting New Hampshire (5-3-2, 0-1-0 AE) at 4 p.m. Not suiting up for the Bearcats will be former starting goalie Ryan Bertoni, who suffered a broken nose after moving to midfield early in the season, captain Kyle Antos, who has a lower extremity injury and is questionable for Wednesday, and points-leader Cody Germain, who is now out for the season with an injured MCL.
Without Germain, Binghamton faces one of its toughest challenges of the season. Wildcat goalkeeper Brian Levey paces the conference in shutouts with an impressive five in 10 games. One of the reasons for Levey’s success is the tall New Hampshire backfield, which has controlled the midfield this season with its athleticism.
“Their strength is balls in the air, restarts, throw-ins, things of that nature,” said Binghamton head coach Paul Marco. “So for us to combat that, for one we’ll have to be at our best in those moments, and we’ll have to play soccer on the ground and fast — which is one of the things we’ve been doing quite well lately.”
Marco is also concerned with New Hampshire freshman forward Chris Banks, who leads the conference in goals with seven, and senior Ross Fishbain, the Wildcats’ leading returning scorer, who has had a quiet season so far, tallying only one assist.
“I don’t see us putting one person on [Banks],” Marco said. “I think that there will be a few guys to take care of him. And Fishbain, although he’s not scoring the goals, he’s their main threat, which has allowed Banks to get free, so I think the two frontrunners are quite good and we’ll have to take care of both of them.”
Last year, the Bearcats lost to the Wildcats 1-0, marking the first time in five tries that New Hampshire had defeated Binghamton. Graduated senior Eric Masi scored off a penalty kick with fourteen minutes remaining in that contest.
“We didn’t bring the right frame of mind and we didn’t start the match well,” Marco said. “I think looking ahead to Wednesday’s match our guys will be ready for that match. We’ll be focused; we’ll have an understanding of who they are and what we’ll do against them.”
Game time is scheduled for 4 p.m. tomorrow at West Gym Field.