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LeBlanc Likes His '15 Squad
August 12, 2015 04:49 PM | Men's Soccer
MORGANTOWN, W.Va. - Marlon LeBlanc makes no bones about it, he really likes his soccer team this year.
The veteran coach has taken four teams to the NCAA tournament, including one to the Sweet 16 back in 2007, and he believes this year’s collection of players can stack up to any he’s had at WVU.
“It might be the best team I’ve had since I’ve been here,” LeBlanc said earlier this week. “It’s a pretty bold statement to make, but I feel pretty good about this group.”
LeBlanc’s guys certainly didn’t feel pretty good about the way the season ended last year, a 3-2 overtime loss to Bowling Green in the Mid-American Tournament semifinals.
It was one of seven losses last season for the Mountaineers, any one of which cost WVU a chance of reaching the NCAA tournament.
“We’ve got a lot of guys that are hungry on a team that was the first team out last year for the NCAA tournament,” noted LeBlanc. “We were 31 on Selection Sunday and just missed out.”
Consequently, LeBlanc had a bunch of super-motivated players on his hands this summer.
“A lot of them spent the summer here – a lot more than we’ve probably had spend the summer here in Morgantown, and a lot of them on their own time to make sure they were ready for this season,” he said.
Experience Returning
West Virginia returns 20 letterwinners, including nine starters, from last season’s team that went 11-7-1. The Mountaineers were unbeaten in seven of their last nine games.
West Virginia returns 20 letterwinners, including nine starters, from last season’s team that went 11-7-1. The Mountaineers were unbeaten in seven of their last nine games.
| Player | Pos. | Career Games |
Career Starts |
|---|---|---|---|
| Brent Arnold | GK | 10 | 10 |
| Jad Arslan | MF | 19 | 10 |
| Haydon Bennett | D | 38 | 34 |
| Ryan Cain | F/MF | 49 | 28 |
| Mike Desiderio | MF | 35 | 26 |
| Christian Diaz | MF | 37 | 31 |
| Jack Elliott | MF/D | 38 | 33 |
| Francio Henry | D | 41 | 28 |
| Zak Leedom | MF | 55 | 30 |
| Jamie Merriam | MF | 52 | 36 |
| Louis Thomas | D | 19 | 17 |
In order for things to go according to plan and return to the NCAA tournament, the team is going to have to smooth out the rough edges and get past those peaks and valleys that have plagued them the prior three seasons since last reaching the NCAA tournament in 2011.
LeBlanc admits he overscheduled two years ago when he had a young and inexperienced team, and that was a big factor in West Virginia’s disappointing 7-7-5 record.
“I put these guys through the ringer two years ago,” LeBlanc said. “These guys were all freshmen and sophomores that year and now they are juniors and seniors.”
Last year, the Mountaineers opened the season with a 1-0 win over St. John’s, routed Virginia Tech of the ACC, 3-0, and beat 12th-ranked Penn State, 2-1, on the road, but also lost matches to St. Francis, Pa., Elon and James Madison and tied Northern Illinois.
Move any one of those four results over to the win column and West Virginia is in the NCAA tournament – that’s how close they were, a fact not lost on the older players.
“We’ve been so close and it hasn’t been good enough,” pointed out senior midfielder Jamie Merriam, a first team All-MAC performer in 2014. “Now, what do we have to do to make it good enough?”
Merriam then answered his own question, pointing out that it’s on all of the guys sitting next to each other in the locker room - not just the older players.
“It’s all through the morale and the mindset of the group,” he admitted. “If we get too high after a win, then the next one may not go our way because we’re anticipating that we are going to smash a team. If we get too low after we lose, then we won’t come out as confident as we need to so it’s king of keeping that balance and making sure everyone knows that we aren’t ‘the best team in the world’, that we aren’t the best team in the country’, but on any given day we can be the best team on the pitch.”
LeBlanc believes that’s possible, especially after the way the Mountaineers performed last spring against the Columbus Crew in a hotly contested exhibition match.
“We played against 11 first-team, full-contracted players and we lost the game 3-2,” the coach pointed out. “We were down 1-0 a minute and a half in and then we scored a minute and a half later to tie it up. We were down 2-1 22 minutes in and we scored in the 23rd minute to tie it up 2-2. We end up losing the game 3-2 and I found so much confidence in that result losing the game because of the resiliency of the group. This team has a chemistry and it has a culture and it has a real identity about it.”
LeBlanc’s teams are known for their wide-open, attacking brand of soccer that is pleasing to watch. He often gets comments from scouts, media and knowledgeable fans expressing their satisfaction in watching his teams play, but sometimes that style doesn’t always win those difficult matches in tough conditions.
And there are some teams on West Virginia’s schedule now that play a different style of soccer requiring patience and concentration – something very difficult for younger teams to do.
Merriam admits facing teams that play this way have given the Mountaineers trouble in the past.
“We work on patience and we have sessions where we can only play in the top of the 18,” he said. “We know there are eight guys back there and we have to work the ball and move it in order t break them down and score our goal. The hope is this year they’re not getting the first goal.”
Speaking of defense, that is probably the aspect of his team LeBlanc is most concerned about heading into the season.
“This team’s problem will not be scoring goals. It was not our problem last year and it’s not going to be our problem this year,” he said.
LeBlanc continued.
“We’ve got three of our four starters back on our back line and that’s a good place to be. We’ve got four starting midfielders back and that’s a good place to be because they’ve got to defend, too,” he said. “We’re going to score goals, but we know you can’t lose if the other team doesn’t score a goal. It’s going to be a focus for us all preseason because we know the goals are going to come for us, it’s a matter of protecting our goal keeper and keeping the other team off the score sheet.”
For LeBlanc, best case scenario is for his team to get off to a strong start in September when the Mountaineers face a difficult stretch of games that includes matches at Michigan and Michigan State and then a home match against preseason No. 3-rated Georgetown at Dick Dlesk Soccer Stadium on Sunday, September 20.
“We need those games to make sure our conference season goes well,” he pointed out. “We’ve always done well in conference but what we’ve got to make sure this year is that we get off on the right foot in September in some of those tough games. With some of our (successful) teams we were able to do that. We started well in September and then we were able to manage October and get into the tournament. The last couple of years we haven’t started well.
“But this team is ready to start September well,” he concluded.
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