Photo: St. Bonaventure Athletics
BY ANDREW HALE, SPORTS EDITOR
With two games remaining, the St. Bonaventure men’s soccer team (6-5-4 overall, 2-3-1 A-10) is positioned to make a late-season push into the Atlantic 10 Conference playoffs for the first time in six years.
Eight teams will qualify for this season’s A-10 playoffs. The Bonnies, tied with George Mason for ninth place in the A-10, have seven points. Eighth-place Dayton has nine.
Prior to the team’s non-conference draw against Bucknell on Tuesday, the Bonnies were winners of two-straight games, both in conference play. While Bonaventure is arguably playing its best soccer of the season, the team’s players said they’re not letting the momentum get the best of them.
“The team’s mindset going into the final two games is just taking it one game at a time,” said junior forward Umechi Akuazaoku. “We don’t want to get too ahead of ourselves, but we still want to show that we have the confidence to get the job done. Our team has the chance to make history for this program, and if we keep the right mindset, I’m sure that we will reach our goal of making it to the A-10 playoffs.”
Bonaventure’s back-to-back A-10 wins came against Duquesne and La Salle. Both had a final score of 2-0.
Akuazaoku scored two goals against Duquesne, tying junior midfielder Andres Javitt with a team-high five goals on the season.
On Senior Day against La Salle, senior forward Rafael Pereira scored his second goal of the season. Sophomore midfielder Dean Mercer scored his first career goal propelling the Bonnies to their second A-10 victory of the season.
“It was a gritty win but even from the locker room after Coach Kwame’s speech, you could feel the energy in the room and just knew that we were going to get the result we needed,” said Akuazaoku. “The beauty of this team is that any guy can step up at any moment which makes it hard for teams to play against us. So, all in all, good performance from the boys. We just have to keep riding the wave now.”
On Tuesday, Bonaventure drew with Bucknell in a tightly contested match.
“I would say that we didn’t have a good performance against Bucknell,” said Javitt. “We got out of there with a tie but not playing as we usually do.”
One thing that will be important for the Bonnies heading into the final stretch of the season is cutting down on mistakes, according to Akuazaoku. Since the beginning of the season, Bonaventure has received 24 yellow cards and has conceded four penalty kicks.
“In these last three games, I would love to see us improve on giving away silly fouls and making silly mistakes when we are up and just in general,” said Akuazaoku. “This is something we struggled with early on because we would be dominating games and then give teams the opportunity to get back into the match from our mistakes. We have definitely improved since the start of the season, and I know that we will keep improving.”
The Bonnies return home Saturday as the team faces Saint Joseph’s in the final home game of the season. The game is scheduled for 4 p.m. on ESPN+.
“My expectation for the team is to go in with very high energy,” said Javitt. “We need this win in order to go to playoffs, so it makes it very important for us.”
