The men’s soccer team went toe-to-toe with No. 25 Providence in the Huskies’ home debut Monday night, playing the Friars to a scoreless tie.
The Huskies outshot Providence 13-12 and produced a few close scoring opportunities, but were ultimately unable to find the back of the net. Head coach Brian Ainscough said that while he was happy to take a tie from the game, he felt strongly his team should have come away with a win.
“If you look at the game, we had so many good moments that we didn’t take advantage of,” he said. “I think Providence was happy that we didn’t beat them.”
Some of the Huskies’ best chances to break the tie came from the foot of sophomore defenseman Petur Vidarsson. In the first half Vidarsson nearly set up a score for sophomore forward Nick Leuders, sending a free kick towards the Providence net that Leuders just missed sending in.
Toward the end of regulation Vidarsson almost played the hero again, sending a shot from about 20 yards out that that came in close but wound up clearing the crossbar. Ainscough said he thought that the team hadn’t properly capitalized on the momentum built up throughout the game.
“[The players] wish they had some of those chances back,” he said. “We’re sort of content with the result, we should have won the game. We were the better team over 110 minutes. When you have the momentum for that long in the game and you don’t take advantage of it, it comes back to haunt you. So we were lucky it didn’t come back to haunt us.”
Junior goalkeeper Scott Partridge made four saves in the contest, recording his first career shutout. The Husky defense combined to hold Providence scoreless just a few days after allowing Holy Cross to score three times, mostly on set plays. Ainscough said he was happy with the improvement his defense had made against the set plays.
“From a defense standpoint, we’d been giving up goals on set plays. We hadn’t given them up on regular plays,” he said. “The whole team did a good job of being focused on set plays which was a good thing for me to see.”
The Huskies face Maine on the road Saturday at 1 p.m. Ainscough said he thinks the match against Maine and the subsequent home tilt with Boston University will give his team good preparation for the Colonial Athletic Association schedule, which begins Sept. 27 against James Madison.
“We’ll be getting ready for the conference next Saturday,” he said. “We can get some more confidence. We expect to cause a lot of damage when we get to the conference.”
