The men’s soccer team was able to pull off a 1-0 win in overtime against Saint Peter’s tonight, in the team’s first matchup of the season
Regardless of who they are facing, coach MacWilliams will take the victory.
“A win is a win,” coach David MacWilliams said. “Is it a big time win? No. But, we have to win these games to prepare ourselves against ranked opponents.”
A goal by sophomore Jared Martinelli assisted by Vaughn Spurrier secured the victory with a golden goal. It was not pretty for the Owls to try and get a goal, but they were able to pull through in the end to get the job done.
The Owls were able to win every single statistical category and it paid dividends in the end by getting the end result they were looking for. But, there are still some causes for concerns as the Owls were not able to capitalize their opportunities as much as they would have liked.
“We need to finish our chances. I think we created enough chances, but we have to get more comfortable in front of the net. We just have to work harder and improve every day in practice,” MacWilliams said. “We need to work on finishing and getting assists. But, once [the strikers] get going, I think then the confidence will build up. But, we’re just trying to get the right chemistry going and we’ll work on it at practice.”
Despite the lack of scoring from numerous opportunities, MacWilliams feels the number of opportunities they created is a positive.
“I think our work rate [was a positive] and I think we created a lot chances and moved the ball well. We kept the team off the board and if you stop teams from scoring, you’re going to win games,” MacWilliams said.
One of the issues from last season was that the Owls were having trouble with was staying out of foul trouble, especially in the second half. But, in this game, they were able to minimize the fouls and play smart soccer.
“We wanted to be aggressive and be smart,” MacWilliams said. “We also wanted to make sure to win at the restarts and cutting down the fouls. We just have to do a better job at the box because we didn’t press together as team sometimes and work on defense in practice. But, if you minimize the restarts then you minimize the opportunities for them to score.”
The Owls will return for their second game next Friday against Wofford.
Hoon Jin can be reached at hoon.jin@temple.edu.
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