Today is his second entry of the campaign as he chronicles the adventures of the team during his senior season.
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After our disappointing result on the road to Creighton, the fellas went straight back to work in preparation to host the Milwaukee Cup, bringing Marquette University back to our campus. The staff in the Athletics offices put a lot of time and effort into the promotion of this game and it certainly paid off. This matchup always draws in a great crowd, but pairing it this year with our Welcome Week featured game brought in an incredible mass of students. There’s nothing better when your fan support is so loud that we couldn’t even hear our names for the starting line up introductions.
The game came to a 1-1 tie after a late Marquette goal, which the current Milwaukee Cup champions being Marquette, ended up keeping the trophy. I can say it was certainly something new not having to mention Axel Sjoberg’s name in the scouting report and how to deal with all 8 feet of him on set pieces.
As a group, we were very pleased with the brand of soccer we played in that game, but obviously, as a senior and being my last crack at the Golden Eagles, it was a result we wish we could of grabbed a win in. Freshman Tinashe Marowa picked up his first collegiate goal and what a game to score it in. Many would have probably just ran into the massive group of Panther fans right in front of him behind the goal, but for some strange reason, he insisted to turn straight around and run to coach and jump into his arms.
I had the pleasure to room with Tinashe, commonly known on the team as “T”, on the road for the Bradley game. We watched the movie “Southpaw” and got to chatting a bit. I asked him if he had met any nice ladies from the dorms yet, and he carried on to tell me that he was getting a bunch of messages after the Marquette game. Goes to show that the women love the guys who score the goals. What a bummer it truly is being a defender.
We traveled down to Peoria, Ill., where we faced Bradley University. We knew going into the game that they weren’t going to play pretty soccer, with a game plan of being extremely direct and utilizing their left back to take five minutes every dead ball to jog up and launch a long throw in into the box. Which is exactly the way we conceded our goal in the 86th minute. As a group, we need to better in both final thirds of the play, offensively and defensively, and certainly on restarts. We emphasize being a hard team to play against and we mold our style of play and game plan to be just that. It is safe to say it wasn’t a very talkative bus ride home after dropping that result, not to mention the air conditioning on the bus wasn’t doing us any favors on a 90-degree day.
The squad will get right back after it on the training pitch to fine tune things before heading out to Spokane, Washington to take on Houston Baptist and Gonzaga. There may even be a light strength training recovery session in the weight room that freshman Josh Kaye will be taking full advantage of, looking to seriously bulk up and gain an additional 50 lbs. along with his high calorie diet plan we have him on. Hope all you fellow Panthers and Panther fans had a safe and fun Labor Day Weekend and were able to relax and recover to take on another week.
-Dust
