Huskies can score goals, but main goal is to win games
Scoring goals doesn’t seem to be the problem with the University of Saskatchewan Huskies.
Preventing them, however, is a different story.
The U of S men’s soccer team — which plays its regular-season home-opener on Saturday against the Alberta Golden Bears in the annual Bateman Cup — recorded six goals while giving up five in two games during their Canada West conference opening weekend on the road this past weekend.
Those are big numbers at the U Sports level.
“What we need to get better at is taking care of keeping the ball out of the net,” says Huskies head coach Bryce Chapman, whose team (1-1) will also play host to the Macewan University Griffins on Sunday at 4 p.m.
“When we looked at the weekend, we weren’t pleased with the performances but to score six goals in two games on the road against two difficult opponents (Calgary Dinos and Mount Royal Cougars), we were pleased from that front. Scoring goals is always a difficult thing. We’ve got some players making other teams’ lives difficult, but we have to get better, collectively, as a group.”
Game-time is noon Saturday at Nutrien Park behind Griffiths Stadium.
“It’s the beginning of school, there’s lots of excitement on campus,” says Chapman. “Being on the road brings a different element — guys get a little tighter and become a group — but being at home and playing in front of our fans is always exciting. We know that you always have to take care of your home games when you start looking at the standings.”
The Huskies’ roster features the top five point-getters from last season in Gabriel Buatois, Kwame Opoku-addai, Marcello Gonzalez, Tyler Redl and Bryce Marinus. Nearly every contributor from a squad that finished second in the Canada West’s Prairie Division returns from last season.
“We’re veteran in some respects,” says Chapman. “This past weekend was a pretty good example of what we can do offensively.
“Expectations never change. We always want to make sure we’re in a playoff spot. We want to put ourselves in the best possible situation and into the final four. Those are just automatic expectations. When you start breaking things down, you want to bring our younger players along within our system and making sure our older players are leading this group.”
Defensively, the Huskies will be led into battle once again by Jacob Powell, a centre back from Coquitlam, B.C., who has earned Canada West all-star status the past two seasons. Newcomers include Team Saskatchewan grads Tobi Ojo, Jordan Fiske, Davidson Fadare and Joshua Fichter along with Christian Scerbo, Nikolas Baikas and Dorion Zambuchini.
“You look at Toby Ojo, who came in the second half against Calgary and scored two goals, and he looked pretty good,” Chapman said. “That’s an impressive debut.
“Nicky Baikas ... over a course of two games, also played well. We talk about both sides of the coin: We’ve got some older guys who have posted some results and some younger guys coming in, pushing our older group nicely. We’ve got some veteran leadership and then we’ve got a lot of young guys starting to make the mark.”
The Huskies have 12 games remaining in the regular season, six of them on home turf.
“We’re still trying to find that identity a bit,” said Chapman, who is into his 16th season with the Huskies.
“We haven’t had a lot of games, but if we really look at what happened over the course of the weekend, we were down a goal on three occasions and the boys never really took their foot off the pedal. They kept fighting and battling. If we can keep building that identity where it’s difficult to play against us, it’s going to put them in a good spot at the end of the season.”