COLUMN: Toledo game important in determining rest of season
The CMU women’s soccer team is getting hot at the right time.
It won its eighth straight game on Sunday with a 3-0 romp over a formidable Northern Illinois team.
CMU dominated the ball, outshooting the NIU 29-5. The game should have been more lopsided but the Huskies goalkeeper made several good saves to keep the game respectable.
With the win, CMU remains tied atop the Mid-American Conference with Toledo at 8-0 in the conference. The Chippewas will travel to Toledo on Friday in what will be conference championship game atmosphere.
CMU has gelled a lot lately and become a true team. Soccer is a game that’s all about chemistry and in the beginning of the season, the team simply didn’t have a whole lot.
Often times, they looked confused and disheveled on the offensive end, firing errant shots and not taking advantage of opportunities.
But not anymore.
The team is being assertive and dominant. It is beginning to take care of the ball and control the tempo of the game.
It is making opponents play CMU soccer.
The defense is stepping up as well. Anchored by the back line staples, juniors Liesel Toth and Claire Horton, who have started 59 straight games, the Chippewas defense has only given up three goals in its last eight contests.
The defense also boasts the Defending MAC Defensive Player of the Year, goalkeeper Shay Mannino. Mannino has been better than anyone in net this year in the MAC with a conference best 0.43 goals-against average.
Head coach Tom Anagnost said the team is beginning to come together as a group. The undefeated record in conference play shows just that.
It couldn’t happen at a better time. With three games to go in the regular season, the team is hitting on all cylinders. But it will face two of its toughest games in the final stretch — Friday against the aforementioned Rockets and Eastern Michigan, also unbeaten in conference play at 5-0-3, in the season finale at home on Oct. 28.
Anagnost continues to preach that his team is very young, fielding a roster almost entirely with of underclassmen (nine freshman, nine sophomores).
But the team is learning how to win. It hasn’t lost a game in almost a month and has been able to hold on in a few one-goal victories at Bowling Green and Kent State, and at home against rival Western Michigan last weekend.
A month ago, those close games may have resulted in losses. But the team continues to fight hard, and will have its biggest battle Friday.
Toledo is the only team in the MAC with a better overall record than CMU. The Chippewas need a signature win to hang their hat on. Their biggest win so far this season was a victory on the road against Miami (OH) (11-5-1). It was the Chippewas first road win in four games and proved to be a jump start to the rest of the MAC schedule.
A victory over Toledo would give CMU another jump start into the last two games of the season, and into the MAC tournament where they hope to repeat as conference champions.
