Terrapin men’s soccer coach Sasho Cirovski sat alone in Home Depot Center in Carson, Calif., last January, the site of this season’s College Cup.
Cirovski’s season had ended a month before, losing in the national semifinals for the second straight year. Cirovski, in town for the Major League Soccer scouting combine, remained in the stands for about 20 minutes after everyone had left, envisioning bringing his team to that stadium.
Nearly a year later, Cirovski and the Terps are in Carson, where they face defending champion Indiana tonight in their third consecutive national semifinals.
“I’m glad I’m bringing them back,” Cirovski said. “And we have a chance to maybe take it a step further.”
The third-seeded Terps (17-5-2) enter the match having not allowed a goal in the NCAA tournament. But as was evident last season, what the team has done before the College Cup no longer matters. Like players have said all year, soccer is a cruel game, one which – particularly in the past two years – can end a season with a few unfavorable bounces.
In 2002, the Terps lost in the national semifinals after a questionable call rewarded UCLA a penalty kick late in the game. The Terps controlled their semifinal match against St. John’s last season, only to lose again on a penalty kick.
This season, the Terps say they are not waiting for luck to find them.
“We’ve had some harsh luck,” Cirovski said. “I’m a firm believer that in due time, things will even themselves out. I hope that we can get some breaks. But we also understand, what [former men’s basketball coach Lefty Driesell] said, ‘The harder you work, the luckier you get.’ So we’re going to go out there and work awfully hard, and hopefully we can create some of our own luck.”
The Terps know they must come out early against Indiana. The Hoosiers have allowed 13 goals this season, including just three in the first half. And even though the Terps have the nation’s top two forwards – junior Jason Garey (21 goals, nine assists) and senior Abe Thompson (11 goals, seven assists) – it will be much harder to score than in the regular season.
Senior midfielder Domenic Mediate (nine goals, nine assists), who missed the Terps’ semifinal last season with a broken collarbone, may be their best option should Indiana successfully limit Garey and Thompson. Mediate, the Terps’ quickest player, has re-energized the offense several times this season, including his assist on the game-winning goal in the quarterfinals. The senior has four career game-winners in the NCAA tournament.
“We’ve probably got three of the best attacking players in the country. And, for the first time, we’ve been able to keep them intact, virtually all year,” Cirovski said. “When those guys are clicking, we can score a lot of goals in a hurry.”
Indiana can also score. The Hoosiers beat Tulsa behind four second-half goals, including two from sophomore forward Jacob Peterson (10 goals, two assists).
But the Terps’ defense has drastically improved since the middle of the season. The Terps have allowed two shots on goal per game in the tournament and have given up five goals in their past 11 games, which include eight shutouts.
“Indiana’s trademark is ‘defense wins championships,'” Cirovski said. “We’ve borrowed some of that phrase and we’ve become a very stingy team defensively.”
The Terps start upperclassmen at every position but three – sophomore defender David Glaudemans, whose insertion into the lineup keyed the defensive turnaround; and freshmen midfielders Stephen King (seven goals, five assists) and Maurice Edu (one goal, two assists), who returns to his home state.
But those young Terps must overcome their anxiety and excitement.
“They can’t be satisfied with this,” Thompson said. “That’s a little bit hard to convey to them because we’ve been there three times. But they need to know, and we’ve made it clear to them, that just because you made it your freshman year doesn’t necessarily guarantee that you’re going to make it the next three. So they need to understand that we have a great opportunity, and we can’t let it slip past us.”
And while the Terps hope for a different result from the past two seasons, they will rely on that experience to guide them through.
“The team of the last two years was very similar, it’s the same personnel,” Cirovski said. “We became a lot more polished last year. This year’s team, the expectations weren’t as high from a lot of people outside the program. But I feel like we knew we were going to be a very good team. You could see it after the first game in Europe, when we beat the reserve team of a top pro club after one game playing together. You knew we could be special.”
