Men’s Soccer Beats #3 Maryland In Preseason Friendly, 1-0

Andrew Bulls scored the game winning goal for UMBC in their preseason friendly against #3 Maryland.

The expectations may be higher than ever as the men’s soccer team, who returns every key player from last year’s team that made it to the conference championship game, as they showed they can not only contend, but beat the best teams in the nation.

It may just be a preseason friendly, but that does not mean Maryland, who won a national championship in 2008, didn’t try to win the game, in fact they pressured the entire game with their first unit of players.

UMBC has only been together in practice for a week, and have come together incredibly fast in that short period of time despite having seven new players on the team.

When they took the field against national power house Maryland in their preseason friendly they only expected to be able to get a good look of what kind of talent they had.

“Maryland is one of the top teams in the country and just to play better is really our goal going into it,” Coach Pete Caringi said. “It’s a long season ahead so I don’t think you can get all excited about a preseason game, it’s a good win, but if we didn’t have that win I’d be linking the same way, it’s just a preseason game and we’re looking to just get better.”

It wasn’t the prettiest win, but nonetheless it was a 1-0 victory over the third ranked team in the country.

While Maryland pressure for the majority of the first half, the defense never broke, and Phil Saunders made some big saves in the goal to keep the game scoreless at the half.

The second half was much more even. UMBC had possession of the ball just as much as Maryland did, and finally broke the Terp defense last in the game when Andrew Bulls bounced a shot off a Maryland defender for the game’s lone goal.

“At the end of the day we saw Maryland as another opponent but they are the number three team in the country and even as a preseason game it gives us a lot of confidence as a team and it pretty much says if we put the work in we have a good chance to actually get a win,” said senior forward Levi Houapeu, who finished number one in the nation in scoring last season.

While no official record of the game will be kept as it was just an exhibition, UMBC definitely pulled an upset, but showed they can repeat the magic from last year.