UConn Men's Soccer 2024 | Page 2 | The Boneyard

UConn Men's Soccer 2024

arch said:
Sorry to repeat this but can anyone share the status of Lucas Almeida? Haven’t seen #9 in game or sideline. Thanks in advance.
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I don't think anyone outside of the team really knows at the moment. They put out a tweet and a graphic for him during the offseason, and he changed his number from 12 to 9 this season, but other than that it has been radio silent.

All 4 of the other forwards have played pretty well, so I guess it's possible Suski and Pickering jumped him in the pecking order and they just don't have minutes for a 5th forward? Seems pretty unlikely to me but anything else would be pure speculation.
 
Scoreless draw at home vs LIU last night. Similar to last time we played them, we had a lot of quality possession but just didn't really generate clear-cut chances. Tomerius hit a long-range effort off the bar in the first half that was probably our best opportunity of the game, but Conway also almost got on the end of a scramble in the box in the second half.
 
I meant to watch on UConn+ and then got lost in my own nonsense. At least we didn't lose.
 
Fairfield_1st said:
I meant to watch on UConn+ and then got lost in my own nonsense. At least we didn't lose.
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Coming off a win vs NJIT, I would have liked to see us keep that momentum, especially playing what is probably a worse team, but what can ya do. They were a tournament team last year, so they're definitely a competitive program.

It wasn't a very exciting game but I like playing LIU. Their head coach, Mike Mordocco, won a national championship at UConn in 2000.
 
yungdowork said:
Coming off a win vs NJIT, I would have liked to see us keep that momentum, especially playing what is probably a worse team, but what can ya do. They were a tournament team last year, so they're definitely a competitive program.

It wasn't a very exciting game but I like playing LIU. Their head coach, Mike Mordocco, won a national championship at UConn in 2000.
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I recognized that coaches name. Keep the former husky on the schedule!
 
Revenge game ending in a tie. Probably not what they were hoping but still no losses. This program is playing better than early season last year. Looking forward to the big East season.
 
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yungdowork said:
I don't think anyone outside of the team really knows at the moment. They put out a tweet and a graphic for him during the offseason, and he changed his number from 12 to 9 this season, but other than that it has been radio silent.

All 4 of the other forwards have played pretty well, so I guess it's possible Suski and Pickering jumped him in the pecking order and they just don't have minutes for a 5th forward? Seems pretty unlikely to me but anything else would be pure speculation.
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Picked up 6 minutes against LIU. So not sitting out for the season I guess.
 
Huskies make their first-ever trip to the CCSU campus for a men's soccer match tonight.

Central Connecticut (0-3) has yet to score this season, so they are clearly struggling so far. The Blue Devils were picked 8th (of 9 teams) in the NEC Preseason Coaches Poll. UConn beat CCSU at home last year in their only previous head-to-head match up.

If you can't make it to Hard Hittin' New Britain, the match is available free on NEC Front Row (NEC Front Row) at 7 pm.
 
This team is actually pathetically bad. May be the worst performance i’ve actually seen.
 
We look fine to me. This time last year we'd already lost to LIU by 2 goals and this year we were disappointed to tie them. We got our first road win out of the way, and we're still undefeated despite playing multiple top 100 teams and starting at least 3-4 different lineups.

I think the level of play has been better than last year and we were an above-average Big East team last year, but we'll have to see how things shake out. The only real concern I have is that we play 4 different forwards and none of them have more than 1 goal at the moment. Our 2 leading scorers (Hanni with 3 and Valentic with 2) share time at the 10 spot.
 
yungdowork said:
We look fine to me. This time last year we'd already lost to LIU by 2 goals and this year we were disappointed to tie them. We got our first road win out of the way, and we're still undefeated despite playing multiple top 100 teams and starting at least 3-4 different lineups.

I think the level of play has been better than last year and we were an above-average Big East team last year, but we'll have to see how things shake out. The only real concern I have is that we play 4 different forwards and none of them have more than 1 goal at the moment. Our 2 leading scorers (Hanni with 3 and Valentic with 2) share time at the 10 spot.
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Lol I fully posted this in the wrong thread. Was looking to post in the US Soccer thread.
 
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Interesting game tonight! It was 0-0 at halftime despite UConn having the bulk of possession and having one long-range effort from Sabri Hanni deflect off the keeper's hands straight into the crossbar.

We came out guns blazing in the second half and picked up 2 goals in the first 15 minutes or so. The first came after Hanni was fouled right outside Siena's box, and he subsequently scored a very good free kick. The second came when Evan Pickering picked up his first goal for us during as scramble in the box after Testori got on the end of a Kieran Chandler cross.

The wheels did fall off a bit in the latter part of that second half and it ended up getting a bit nervy. We made quite a few subs after our second goal and gave up control of the midfield which let Siena get back in the game. Specifically some of our more offensive players (Suski and Valentic) seemed to drop the intensity of the press a lot which pinned us back a bit. That actually forced Giovanni Dennis into a pseudo-left back role where he ended up getting subbed back out after only playing 10 or 15 minutes.
 
I think depth, at least the first 1/2 of the season, may be an issue.
The starting 11 plus 2 are fairly strong - a big fallout after that - especially in the midfield area. Kids need experience playing against grown men.
A win is a win
 
I'm 1200 miles from Storrs so I can't attend games like I would like but fortunately there is UConn+. Not many fans in the stands for Siena. Is that the new normal?
 
gtcam said:
I think depth, at least the first 1/2 of the season, may be an issue.
The starting 11 plus 2 are fairly strong - a big fallout after that - especially in the midfield area. Kids need experience playing against grown men.
A win is a win
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For sure. We also sat Max Gummesson for almost the entire second half and he is normally our starting holding midfielder, so I think the coaches were trying to expose some players to things they might not be doing every game.

Last year attendance really picked up in the second half of the year when we started playing the BE teams and Vermont and stuff. I expect it’ll probably be similar this year. I would love to see some t-shirts for students or something to get that Goal Patrol section rocking again.
 
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According to the schedule, tomorrow night's 7pm away game at Dartmouth should be watchable on ESPN+.

Our next game after that is away at DePaul on 9/20 which, along with every other Big East game this year, is unfortunately supposedly on FloFC
 
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UConn held on for a 2-1 win away at Dartmouth tonight. Really ugly game; there were fouls all over the place and Dartmouth finished with 2 red cards.
 
yungdowork said:
UConn held on for a 2-1 win away at Dartmouth tonight. Really ugly game; there were fouls all over the place and Dartmouth finished with 2 red cards.
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as Rugby players often say: “Football (soccer) is a gentleman's game played by hooligans, and rugby is a hooligan's game played by gentlemen.”
 
Kolumbo said:
as Rugby players often say: “Football (soccer) is a gentleman's game played by hooligans, and rugby is a hooligan's game played by gentlemen.”
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I've also noticed that a lot of refs love to "let them play" in the first half and then unsurprisingly the players start trying to police the game themselves. Then when the ref starts blowing his whistle, all of the players are already ramped up.

Ref gave out 9 yellow cards yesterday, but he let the game get away from him first and it really impacted the flow of play.
 
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UConn with a 3-2 win over DePaul in Chicago. Pretty nerve-wracking game where we were down 1-0 and 2-1 but kept fighting back. Eli Conway scored a perfect hattrick (left foot, right foot, header) to get us the win. His 3rd goal was a pretty beautiful strike with his left foot. You can see why he got picked in the Superdraft
 
Similar to some of our other showings this year, we had a lot of possession but didn’t show a ton of killer instinct. We also used a lot of players in ways that I haven’t necessarily seen us use before:

-Kwame Adu-Gyamfi seemed to be playing left mid until Max Gummesson went out with what looked to be a possible shoulder injury (went up for a header and landed on his shoulder after getting his legs taken out).
-Kieran Chandler started the 2nd half at right mid when he normally plays left back.
-Lucas Almeida made an appearance in both halves despite not getting much run in previous games.
-Scott Testori didn’t appear at all in the first half and only played ~20 minutes
-Nicolas Tomerius didn’t play at all.

I don’t think any of the decisions were too bad or strange in isolation but it does seem like a lot of experimenting for a game that finished 0-0.
 
gtcam said:
Disappointing draw - just no finisher at yesterday's match. May hurt a bit with the top 25 rankings........................................
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Fairfield played a 6 man back line the entire game. They were playing for a 0-0 draw. We had a few unlucky chances but they were hard to come by. Big game against top 15 seton hall need the finishing there.
 
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