Men's Soccer Showing Steady Improvement

J. Andrew Lockwood
Senior Editor / Columnist

The men’s soccer team is in a much different position this year after a tumultuous season a year ago. They’ve been at the top or near the top of the Atlantic Sun conference standings nearly all season and with a strong finish to the 2009 campaign, they could make a serious push for a conference title this season. A resurrection of the men’s offense along with a stout defense has helped the Bears win the close matches many times this year.

After winning two games in Nashville against Belmont and Lipscomb, the Bears returned home to the friendly confines of Bear Field to face ETSU and USC-Upstate before making a short trip to Orlando to face Central Florida. Playing in front of big home crowds, the men faced a feisty ETSU team Thursday night, prevailing 1-0 in double overtime. With the win, the men have come out with their best start to conference play since the 2004 season.

Despite being outshot in every category on the night, the Bears found a way to find the back of the net in the 106th minute off of a Richie Edmondson goal that gave them the victory. Coming from a series of passes from teammates Chrispine Ong’Ango and Arkenson Neckles, the goal broke the spirit of the Buccaneers, a team that out-shot the Bears 15-8 (7-4 on goal) and 9-1 in corner kicks.

The win was head coach Brad Ruzzo’s 6th at Mercer, commenting after the game on Mercer’s Athletic website, “We knew ETSU was going to be very organized defensively and limit our scoring chances. We had to take advantage of the few opportunities we could get and we definitely did that tonight.”

Following the nail-biting win against ETSU, the team resumed action Saturday against a tough USC-Upstate squad. Unfortunately, the table was turned on Mercer during the contest as they continually had major scoring opportunities during the game but squandered them or couldn’t convert them into goals. The final tally on the scoreboard saw Mercer take an edge with shots (20-13), shots on goal (13-9), and corner kicks (6-0), yet fall to the Spartans 2-1.

It didn’t take long for the Spartans to put in a goal in the 19th minute off of Erkan Yildirim. More surprisingly though, the goal was USC-Upstate’s first real scoring opportunity of the game after Mercer put the pressure on Upstate’s goalie Pat Regna during the opening minutes. The Bears would tie up the match with an Ian Cameron goal (6th of the season) with 6 seconds left in the first half, but again, a defensive mistake would come back to haunt the Bears in the 82 minute with a John Kadane goal late in the game. It was a heartbreaking loss indeed for the Bears as they out-hustled and out-played USC-Upstate for the entire game minus those two plays.
Just like the old Willie Nelson song, Ruzzo’s squad was on the road again last Tuesday to face their final non-conference opponent of the season in Central Florida. The Golden Knights gave the Bears all they wanted in a 4-2 contest. Resting a few of his starters, Mercer still played with UCF reasonably well in the 2nd half, but still struggled in many aspects during the course of the game. In fact, Central Florida scored four first half goals to take an embarrassing 4-0 lead into halftime. However, the resilient Bears put two goals in the net of their own from Ong’Ango and Charles Peterson to give the 4-2 final score.

Explaining his strategy after the game, Ruzzo commented, “We rested some starters tonight and gave some other guys some time to show what they could do on the field. We are going to need everyone on this team to be healthy and ready to step up as we enter our stretch run in A-Sun play.”

The stretch run that Ruzzo speaks of comes against FGCU and Stetson on the road before the final home stand against Jacksonville and North Florida October 29th and 31st.