Monday, August 23, 2010

Back to School

Part 2 of the soccer weekend was the University of Maryland's exhibition opener against St. John's at Ludwig Field. A quick check with the two-year old (are you sure you want to watch more soccer?) and we were off.

Again, Towson is a long way from College Park, and we did not get to campus until the second of the three 35 minute periods played. The Red Storm begin the season with a number 17 preseason ranking; the Terps began at number 6. The game itself was not close.

At first blush, Maryland seems like it is going to be a very, very good team. We missed Greg Young's goal off of a London Woodberry cross and we missed the link up between Jason Herrick and Karou Forbess that resulted in a Casey Townsend goal.

But what we did see was Ethan White impose himself and dominate in the center of the backline. We watched a right side featuring an aggressive London Woodberry at fullback and Sunny Jane flying down the wing (at one point in the third period, Jane attacked the Red Storm defense with five or six stepovers into the goal box). We saw a very strong change of pace option up front with Jordan Cyrus and Matt Oduaran.

In short, we saw a lot of good things, all of which bode well for the upcoming season. The team appears to be even better than we would have anticipated.

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