Marquette University Athletics
Steve Adlard's Coaching Diary
10/15/1999 12:00:00 AM | Men's Soccer
Once a week during the soccer season, Steve Adlard, Marquette University's head men's soccer coach, will share his thoughts on the Golden Eagles' squad.
October 15, 1999
Q: Kind of a strange week with a loss on the road to UNC Charlotte and then having a game at Wright State suspended because of weather.
A: It's frustrating because you feel that the weather beat you twice, one of which counts against your record. At Charlotte, the field became a lake so you could not move or control a ball other to advance it. At times you had to advance it two or three kicks to just to advance it out of a puddle. We were sad afterwards, but it's behind us. At the end, I suppose, when the dust settles nobody will believe that the other team beat you. I don't that it dented our confidence, it just frustrated us. This wonderful run became something of a passion to keep going.
When we started the Wright State game it was sunny and about 75 degrees, but you could see the bad weather building. When the skies opened up, we were ahead, 1-0, and cruising along nicely. When we left the field, there was lightning everywhere and it was just pouring rain. We did go back and now the wind has dramatically reversed, instead of being with us, it's totally against us. Then, a few minutes later, it (the bad weather) came back again and eventually we get into a tornado warning that runs until 4:30 p.m. which, because of our flight situation, gave us no time to get to a legal game of 70 minutes. The right, but painful decision, was to suspend the game. Whether or not we make the game up remains to be seen. I think it could be if NCAA considerations are involved. We may have to revisit it to see if it becomes important.
Q: What about this Saturday's home game against Cincinnati?
A: Cincinnati has played a good schedule and they are a good team. They have some credible wins as well as some squeaky wins against teams that they have beaten nicely. I would say that they are a bit of a Jekyll and Hyde team. They just don't come out and play, they have good days when it flows for them and then there are those days when they have to work hard to get a result. They are coming here to our field and it is totally different from what they are used to playing on. Their style of play, to be quite candid, is extremely well-suited to their home field. They tend not to play the ball on the ground very much, they get the ball up in the air and contest high balls. I think that if we can play what we do well, then we are going to give them some problems. If we were to win this one then we would qualify for the conference tournament. It would put us in a good position because of the wins behind us.
Q: What about the conference and how things could play out?
A: Other than St. Louis and UAB, you can't predict with certainty the makeup of the conference tournament. That tells you how tight it's going to be. It's conceivable that the team in third place at the end of the season could have a .500 record. That's very strange, and maybe not good, but that is how competitive the league is. It really is feasible that the third place, and certainly the fourth place team, could be a .500 team.
