VT vs. VCU (0-4 L)

Well, it's a bit of a shocker, but that's part of college soccer and coaching young adults in a very competitive environment. We knew VCU would be tough to crack based on their pre-season form and our slow and non-challenging preseason schedule. What we did not know was that we would make many individual mistakes in our backfield that would lead to easy goals for VCU right off the bat in each half. I think if we had marked up on both restarts (throw in in 1st half and corner in 2nd half), the game would have been a very tight affair. I am still not sure how we would have scored a goal that night since our offense was uninspiring while their forwards seemed dangerous all the time. Sometimes you just can't explain certain lapses of players, but overall we made errors that we've never done before. For example, we had trouble clearing a ball when under pressure. What? That was hard to believe...
This led directly to the first 2 goals. We talked with the guys about it, showed them some video and appealed to them to take responsibility for their mistakes and improve. I think, then when you do improve, as we did on Sunday, you know we stepped in the right direction and we just have to work so much harder now to win more games b/c we dropped our opener. I give VCU a lot of credit for being an excellent defensive team on the night and they did deserve this victory and everything that comes with it.