Tonight, Ludwig Field won’t house a record crowd, national television crew or the hype of a conference rivalry game.
But in No. 3 Connecticut, the Terrapin men’s soccer team faces all the same problems and none of the pomp from its Friday night match against No. 9 Duke.
The Huskies (7-0-2), who have allowed just three goals in nine matches this season, are arguably the toughest team coach Sasho Cirvoski will welcome to College Park this season. But they’ll arrive in the subdued fashion of a midweek game.
“Right now, they’re the real deal,” Cirovski said. “They are the team, next to [No. 1] Akron, that is the most talked about.”
Cirovski said he would have liked to play the Huskies during the weekend, but he had no other choice than to schedule them during the week. Due to a scheduling quirk that left the Terps with a truncated 11-week regular season, the only open date for both teams fell just days after the Terps’ anticipated home game against Duke.
Still, Cirovski welcomed the challenge.
“We wanted to get as much quality into our schedule as possible,” Cirovski said. “At this point, they’ve earned the right to be among the top-ranked teams in the country, so they’re very good.”
In scheduling tough midweek matches, Cirovski aims to sustain any positive momentum and focus lingering from the previous weekend. The situation fits tonight — the Terps are coming off their first high-quality win of the season after dispatching Duke, 2-0, just four days ago.
Mitigating any momentum from that win, however, are the burdens of a physically and emotionally draining stretch of games. The Terps have had just three days to prepare for their toughest nonconference game of the season, and Connecticut is the third straight top-10 opponent they will face.
The key for the Terps tonight will be to keep their offense playing with same intensity and connectedness it showed against the Blue Devils.
A late first-half goal from midfielder Patrick Mullins ended a streak of nearly 280 minutes without a goal in the run of play. After a disconcerting performance against North Carolina on Sept. 24, the Terps went back to the basics Friday, pounding the Duke box with dangerous crosses and sniffing out loose rebounds.
“It was a long bus ride home, a lot of soul searching,” Mullins said of the loss at North Carolina. “We thought our offense kind of stuttered a little bit there and we wanted to get back on the right track. I think we found a nice rhythm.”
Mullins and the offense could find themselves stuck with the same problem they faced against the Tar Heels. The Huskies, according to Cirovski, are a possession-oriented team “a little bit in the mold of [North] Carolina.” At times, the Terps struggled to move the ball even past midfield and into the attacking third against the Tar Heels.
The Terps will need to continue to build on their attacking success to top Connecticut.
“We knew we hadn’t really done anything and we still haven’t done anything,” midfielder Matt Kassel said. “I think we’ll be ready.”
He hesitated, then corrected himself.
“No,” Kassel said, “I know we’ll be ready.”
ceckard@umdbk.com
