Monday, October 26, 2009:

Good morning! I hope everyone had a great week-end. Before I begin, I must wish my brother a Happy Birthday on his 71st! Our last game was this past Friday evening in Jackson, MS, against conference rival Millsaps College. After having played Huntingdon College on Wednesday evening, we were hoping for a much better performance against Millsaps and we did get a much better one indeed. The game was a tale of total possession by BSC as Millsaps did not look to attack unless it was off an unforced error by us and then they would counter attack with a long pass and a prayer for a shot! They put all 11 players behind the mid-line and tried to just play for a tie. We had 19 shots on goal to their 3! We just could not find the back of the net. We had plenty of good opportunities, but on this night, it was not to be. The game went into double overtime and the final score was 0:0 after 110 minutes of play.

Now, while we are all disappointed that we did not win the game as we should have, we were delighted to finally find our rhythm and flow again. We cut our unforced errors down from a high against Huntingdon of 34 to just 14 in this game. It was very nice to see that we could persevere and not lose concentration or have a mental breakdown to allow a goal. The longer you play in a game where you have total domination and possession, sometimes you become a little complacent and lose focus and that is when a goal can occur. The best part of the this game was that we never lost focus. We played all our starters and made only one substitute and that was for only 18 minutes. I am extremely proud of our team for their focus, but also for their fitness. As most of you know, I do not make a lot of changes during the games, as I truly believe it disrupts the rhythm and flow you are creating. So, I am very happy we did what was necessary to come out of that game with no worse than a tie. Should we have won? Certainly, but sometimes soccer can be a cruel game and just because you have total domination and possession and your stats show a great disparity between the 2 teams, does not mean that you will win every time. This was one of those games. We did not play poorly, but I knew going in, especially after our long layoff and the way we played on Wednesday, this would be a test for us to regain some of our rhythm and hopefully prepare us for our final 5 games, with 4 of those against conference rivals. We continue our conference play this week-end on the road against Centre College in Danville, KY on Friday evening and then on Sunday we take on DePauw University in Greencastle, IN. After this week-end, we come home for our final 3 games against Colorado College on Friday, November 6 and Austin College on Sunday, November 8. We will then conclude our 2009 season against a very old rival from our NAIA days, Berry College at home on November 13.

So, until after this week-end, when I write about our games, I will say good bye and wish everyone a great week.

Best regards,
Coach G from Birmingham, AL