Defender Mikey Ambrose, goalkeeper Cody Niedermeier, and midfielder Alex Shinsky react after UMBC upset the Terps, 1-0, to knock them out of the NCAA tournament at Ludwig Field on Nov. 23, 2014.
Mael Corboz had grown tired of losing. It was Oct. 5, and the Terrapins men’s soccer team had just watched coach Sasho Cirovski charge at the officials in protest of a call that sealed the Terps’ 3-2 overtime loss to Northwestern and pushed their record to 3-5-2.
Cirovski’s antics earned him a one-game suspension and a $10,000 fine, marking a disappointing start to the season for a program accustomed to postseason success. So Corboz, a midfielder, approached his childhood friend and fellow midfielder Dan Metzger.
“We’re not losing another game this season. We’re not going to let that happen,” Corboz recalled telling Metzger.
Over the next seven weeks, Corboz scored eight goals to help the Terps mount an 11-game winning streak and capture the regular season conference title and the first Big Ten tournament trophy in university history.
But in its very first postseason match, the team’s run ended with a 1-0 loss to UMBC on Nov. 23.
Cirovski said the Terps’ lack of impact scorers — Corboz led the team with 10 goals — ultimately prevented them from extending their season past the second round of the NCAA tournament for the first time in 14 years.
“[Scoring] was always going to be a concern for us,” Cirovski said. “Besides Mael, nobody scored more than four goals in the flow of play all year. That’s tough. You’re playing with fire when you get to the tournament.”
While the Terps returned many key players from last year’s squad that advanced to the national final, their top three scorers had departed. So Cirovski tried different options up top early on.
Forwards George Campbell and David Kabelik began the campaign as starters but didn’t produce, so Cirovski tested combinations of all five forwards. Defender Jereme Raley even started at forward for the Terps’ Sept. 19 match against Michigan State.
Six games into the year, the Terps were being outscored 5-7.
For all of their offensive inefficiencies, the Terps hardly had difficulty winning the possession battle. In fact, they were only outshot in two games before the UMBC loss. Metzger and defender Mikey Ambrose often stymied opponents’ attacks and used their speed to start the Terps’ counterattack. The Terps would get into the scoring third but didn’t have the weapons to finish.
“It was frustrating,” Ambrose said. “But that’s soccer. You see Barcelona play every week; sometimes they will have a random goal scored on them that no one saw coming, and they’ll lose 1-0. Sometimes in soccer, the ball just falls into the net.”
Forwards Jeroen Meefout and Eric Carbajal started the Northwestern game, and the Terps scored more than one goal for the third time in 10 contests. But the disappointing result compounded the team’s frustration.
“We have to reinvent ourselves in the middle of the year,” Cirovski said after a 1-0 loss to Georgetown on Sept. 30. “We’re good enough to beat Georgetowns and Michigan States. We’ve played equal or better in the games we’ve played these teams.”
So against VCU on Oct. 8, Cirovski opted to try midfielders Alex Shinsky and Mikias Eticha, who missed much of the early season with injuries up top. The crafty, energetic seniors helped the team score 21 goals over their eight-game winning streak to end the regular season.
Behind the newfound offensive production, Cirovski’s team picked up high-profile victories against then-No. 3 Penn State and then-No. 5 Indiana in October. On Nov. 16, they beat Indiana, 2-1 in the Big Ten tournament final when Corboz sliced a free kick from 20 yards out in the 86th minute.
“We’ve wanted this,” goalkeeper Zack Steffen said after the win. “We set our sights on this from the beginning of the season. So to be able to establish our goal and what we wanted, it means a lot.”
One week later, UMBC ended the Terps’ season and Retrievers fans stormed Ludwig Field.
In less than two weeks, four teams will convene in Cary, North Carolina, for the College Cup. For the first time in three years, the Terps won’t be playing on college soccer’s final weekend.
“We tried to throw a number of different people out there, but we just didn’t have that one threat that we’ve always had. We’ll have that in future years,” Cirovski said. “We’ll have that. That’s for the future.”
