For junior defender Kevin Cope, the MSU men’s soccer team’s 1-0 loss to No. 2 Akron on Wednesday is a good example of how their season has unfolded.
“In the beginning of the season, we were kind of struggling, and in this later part, we’ve been coming together,” Cope said. “I think we did the same thing with this game.”
It was a tale of two halves as Akron outshot the Spartans 8-2 and had a 3-0 corner kick edge at the end of the first half, one of which led to the only goal of the game.
Cope said Akron was difficult to defend due to their complex lineup.
“They’re a very good team, and we knew that coming in,” he said. “They’ve just got a lot of moving pieces. We thought if we could keep our communication up and stay organized defensively, then we would give ourselves a chance to win, and I think we did that.”
Still, head coach Damon Rensing said playing against a team of Akron’s caliber means they needed to do a few things better.
“It’s frustrating,” Rensing said “Against a team like this, you can’t wait to go down 1-0 and then you start to kind of turn it up, you’ve got to turn it up from the start. Certainly, defending a corner kick isn’t how you want to give them a goal to win.”
With a rivalry game against Michigan looming on Saturday night, sophomore forward Adam Montague said they are standing by for other results in the Big Ten to see if they’ll be playing for a Big Ten championship in Ann Arbor.
“We’re kind of waiting to see what happens tomorrow night with Northwestern and Indiana,” Montague said. “We hope that Indiana can either get the win or tie. Hopefully, we’ll be playing for a Big Ten championship Saturday night.”
He said the chance to play for a Big Ten championship, especially against Michigan, is really exciting and that everybody on the team is motivated to get the championship ring.
“I imagine a good crowd is going to come out,” he said. “Definitely, being a Saturday night game, there’s going to be a good soccer crowd, and then it’s the Michigan State-Michigan soccer game, which is a huge tradition. There’s going to be a lot of people there — hopefully, a lot of green and white.”
Cope said that from the beginning, the team has been looking at this last stretch of games as a key to a possible championship run.
“When we saw our schedule and we saw our last three games — Indiana, Akron, Michigan — we knew it was going to be a tough stretch, and we said, ‘What if that last game came down for the championship?’” he said. “We’re all excited for it, and I think that it’s actually here, we all live for those moments.”
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