BELTON — In the words of head coach Ben Allen, it’s been a “shaping year” for UMHB men’s soccer.
What exactly does that entail for a team that currently sits first in the American Southwest Conference standings? For one thing, plenty of tough matchups. At one point, UMHB was ranked 17th nationally by Massey Ratings in Strength of Schedule. They beat St. Olaf College on the road when the Oles were the nation’s No. 1 team. They battled Claremont-Mudd-Scripps, a team that is 11-2-2, on a neutral field. They hosted Trinity, a 12-0-2 team right now, and stayed tied with the Tigers (or led) for the first 63 minutes.
The Crusaders have also fought through their fair share of injuries. They’ve had young players in key roles during critical stretches of matches. Yet, UMHB enters Saturday’s 7:30 p.m. home duel against Hardin-Simmons with a chance to all but stamp its name on the ASC regular season title, carrying a 4-0-1 league record and plenty of fortitude that has been gained along the way.
“It’s been a challenging year in a lot of ways with injuries, challenging road games, and things like that,” Allen told True To The Cru. “We’ve had to figure out different things, play freshmen in some important roles, and then you throw on top of that playing everyone [in the ASC] two, potentially three times. It’s hard.”
The Cru, the preseason favorites to win the ASC title, opened the year with just one win in their first four matches. But that win came in Northfield, Minnesota, on a day when UMHB snapped St. Olaf’s 12-match home unbeaten streak. The reigning national champions fell in their home opener, as UMHB came away with a 1-0 win thanks to Drew Cooley’s go-ahead goal.
“It’s definitely going to be a highlight of my experiences at Mary Hardin-Baylor,” Allen, in his third year as head coach, said of the victory. “Not just because they were No. 1 or the defending national champions. Going on the road, in that environment, playing against a big-time opponent is always exciting. For us to get that win and to play well and grind out that result, I think it does show that when we’re on, we’re a tough team to hang with.”
Once they got back to Belton, the Crusaders showed that in back-to-back wins over Austin College and McMurry by a combined score of 5-1. Then came another difficult stretch, facing Trinity and St. Thomas (TX), two of the SCAC’s best, just five days apart. A match against UT-Dallas immediately afterwards only added to the difficulty, as the Comets were 4-1-3 and transitioning to Division II. UMHB dropped all three.
“It’s a two-fold thing,” Allen responded, when asked about the mentality through that skid. “We were banged up around that time and didn’t have our full list of guys that we’d like to use, and were playing really good opponents. [Going through that] it was just preaching the process of using these games to shape us going into conference play. And it showed us that the system we were running just wasn’t working. We changed tactics and formations up and I think that has definitely helped us going into conference play.”
The three-game losing skid at the end of September was UMHB’s last loss. Starting with the 2-0 shutout of HSU in the ASC opener on Oct. 3, UMHB has won four of its last six matches. Through conference play, just two oppposing shots have found the back of the net against The Cru, the best mark in the ASC.
“Being able to be a little stingier in conference play with the chances that we allow opponents to create keeps us in the game,” Allen noted, when talking about UMHB’s defensive performance. “Even if we’re struggling to score goals or just not clicking offensively, we’re going to be in every game [if we play good defense]. It’s definitely helped quite a bit.”
Much of that credit goes to the play of goalkeeper Hayden Owens, a sophomore who only seems to get better as the year progresses. The ASC’s Co-Goalkeeper of the Year as a true freshman a season ago, Owens has 49 saves and 14 goals allowed in 14 matches. Against HSU, he will ecplise the 1200-minute mark for the first time in his college career.
“The last two years, he’s really built well into the year, where he’s hitting his rhythm at this point,” Allen said. “Going into conference play, and even before that, he had some big-time games and played really well. He’s 6’4, so he collects crosses really well on thrown-ins and any free kick from outside the 18. Having that reassurance of that guy in the goal and knowing that he has it in him to make a big-time save gives us confidence, it gives the guys confidence.”
He came in as a third-string goalkeeper last season, and worked himself in the mix, eventually starting 10 matches in a 9-5-2 season for the Crusaders. Owens’ impact will be critical against HSU, considering the Cowboys are averaging 3.33 goals per game in ASC play.
“He’s stepped up into his role and knows we need him,” Allen added. “He’s really embraced that.”
The placement of this second meeting with HSU in the schedule, and the scenario in the conference standings with the two programs essentially separated by half a game, brings back memories of UMHB’s battles with Concordia in the regular season finale in past years. In many seasons, that final match would be between the ASC’s top two with a competitive atmosphere coming along with it.
The same should be expected on Saturday, with this contest late in the season between the conference’s two frontrunners. But there is something notably different.
As Allen said, in each of the last two seasons, UMHB had already wrapped up the ASC regular season title by the time the game with Concordia rolled around. In this case, the conference title—and hosting rights for the league tournament—is still very much in the air.
“The last two times we played [Concordia], it was, ‘How do we manage our bodies going into the conference tournament?,'” Allen noted. “This year, we obviously haven’t clinched yet, and we’ve got to manage and play against good teams at the end. The newness has worn off, and you hit a wall eventually. It’s who can push through that wall and be healthy and be in a rhythm. Those are always the challenging things at this point in the year.”
It’s in high-leverage matches like the one on Saturday that truly test a team. All the training up to this point is put on the line, and the difficult non-conference matches Allen had his squad play through early on have the potential to pay dividends in the quest for the regular season league title.
“You don’t rise above your baseline training in hard situations,” Allen said. “You fall to where your baseline is. If things aren’t going well, you’re going to fall back to your most basic training. So for us, we try to provide an environment within practice every week to where in those tough and challenging games, they’re going to resort back to what they know and how we train throughout the week.”
