Stratford Seeking Greatness From Mountaineers For Next Two Weeks
November 29, 2023 11:28 AM | Men's Soccer, Blog
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By: John Antonik
MORGANTOWN, W.Va. – In Dan Stratford's mind, the West Virginia University men's soccer season boils down to two weeks.
Can his team be great for two weeks? That's the question he asked his players earlier this week.
"Every win is a new accolade for this team, and I wanted to avoid the pitfall of the accomplishment for this team being making the Final Four. No, the accomplishment is winning the whole thing," he said.
Standing in the way of that objective is a 10-4-6 Loyola Marymount team whose record this year doesn't tell the full story of how dangerous they really are.
The Lions have victories this year against Oregon State, which is still alive in the College Cup, Virginia, Portland and a pair against UCLA, including a second-round win against the Bruins on Nov. 19. Loyola is a team that doesn't need to possess the ball to win, which is a contrasting style to the way West Virginia wants to play soccer.
"They're clinical, and they haven't needed to create too much for them to take a lead in the game," Stratford said yesterday via a Zoom conference with media. "They've played an incredible schedule - I think eight teams inside the top 40 from an RPI perspective - and they're 7-0-1 in those games. They seem to do incredibly well against other good teams.
"They're very comfortable when they're not the team in possession of the ball, and that's a little rare at this stage in the tournament," Stratford pointed out. "Normally, you're playing other teams that like to be the team with the ball, but they've had less possessions on average than their opponent throughout the entire season.
"We're a team that feels comfortable with the ball, and they are a team that feels comfortable without it, for sure," he added. Coach Dan Stratford is now 41-15-15 and has led WVU to two NCAA Tournament quarterfinal appearances in four seasons in Morgantown (WVU Athletics Communications photo).
That alone should make for a compelling NCAA Tournament quarterfinal match at Dick Dlesk Soccer Stadium on Saturday afternoon. Stratford said his fifth-seeded Mountaineers (16-2-4) are going to play their style, no matter the opponent or the possible weather conditions for a game being played in Morgantown, West Virginia, on Dec. 2.
"Our identity has been dynamic and quick in transition moments and wanting the ball back as quickly as possible and try and play the game in advanced areas," he said. "Fear and conservatism do us no favors right now, and if we go out, we go out on our terms. There would be far more regret if we didn't advance playing a style that doesn't suit us."
Weather is certainly a variable to consider. An unexpected dusting of snow on Tuesday literally shut down Morgantown for the day and colder-than-usual temperatures have lingered through today.
However, the long-term forecast is calling for much milder temperatures possibly reaching the low 60s by game time on Saturday. Stratford prefers a dry, fast track for his team.
"I don't know that it matters all that much at this stage," he shrugged. "The conditions relate more to where we're playing. It's our grass field, and we'll be creative from that perspective. If it's cold for them, it will be cold for us as well, and I was freezing in the second half against Vermont. That aspect will have a very minimal impact on the outcome of the game.
"If the conditions make it more difficult for us to possess the ball, you could argue that favors a team that's more comfortable without the ball," he noted.
Stratford continued.
"The way we try to play, of course, we want the best conditions possible, and I've already reached out to our grounds crew to coordinate with them whatever we can do," he said. "The field has held up incredibly well, and we're guaranteed this is the last home game of the season, so let's go out with a bang and play the best brand of football we can possibly play on the best field possible, and I know they're working diligently to make that the case."
WVU is also adding extra bleachers once again to accommodate another overflow crowd like what we saw for the match against No. 1-ranked Marshall on Oct. 18 when a record 3,147 showed up, and again in the NCAA Tournament when 3,137 witnessed a 1-0 victory over Louisville on Nov. 19.
When tickets were put on sale Monday, the match sold out in less than five hours, and if there were enough seating for 5,000, West Virginia would have little trouble filling it as well. That's the amount of excitement and enthusiasm there is in Morgantown right now for the Mountaineers.
That impressive fan support made a big difference in last Saturday's 2-1 victory over Vermont.
"There were some struggles last weekend against Vermont, and at that hour mark, the crowd got back into the game, and it really kind of carried us through the next 30 minutes," Stratford pointed out. "When we got the eventual winner with nine minutes to go, the enthusiasm and the energy really gave us a lift and the crowd was an incredible piece of that."
Stratford believes a loud, enthusiastic crowd on Saturday can be the X-factor to help lift his team to its first-ever College Cup appearance in school history. Two years ago, West Virginia's quest to reach the College Cup ended on penalty kicks at Georgetown.
The Hoyas were knocked out of this year's tournament by James Madison, which lost to Loyola Marymount last Saturday. WVU and James Madison played to a 2-2 tie in Morgantown back on Oct. 8, so there are a lot of common opponents between two schools separated by nearly 2,500 miles.
"I'm incredibly proud of how we played (at Georgetown); we went for it," Stratford said of his team's Elite Eight appearance in 2021. "We played within our identity, and it was two really good teams at the time in a really close contest, and we came out on the wrong side of a penalty shootout. There was no element of that game where I felt like we fell short – effort, application or intent."
He expects another similar effort is going to be required to defeat the Lions on Saturday – from his players and from the 12th man sitting in the stands.
"Obviously, I'm incredibly excited that we've already sold out the game in the short amount of time that we did, and I'm hoping the students and the Maniacs come out and fill the surface area," he said. "We're already working towards getting those bleachers put back in that we had for the Marshall game earlier in the season, so I'm hoping we break another attendance record and go comfortably over 3,000, or close to 4,000.
"That would be incredible, and hopefully, we can give them a reason to jump in their cars and drive to Louisville next week.," he concluded.
Two weeks and three games, that's what is sitting in front of Dan Stratford's Mountaineers.
Saturday's Loyola Marymount match will kick off at 2 p.m. and will be televised on ESPN + (Nick Farrell and Adam Zundell).
The winner will face the winner of No. 9 Clemson and No. 16 Stanford in one national semifinal match at Lynn Family Stadium in Louisville, Kentucky, on Friday, Dec. 8.
The other national semifinal will pit the winner of No. 3 North Carolina and Oregon State against the winner of No. 2 Notre Dame and Indiana.
