Geno, Schoenfeld Put Bucs Past Winthrop

Okay, so there were volleyball and soccer tournaments last weekend. I was going to post a full review on them, but there were certain impediments (mainly the fact that I spent most of Tuesday sick in bed, and the same for Thursday), so I'll just give you the gist:

The VolleyBucs were solid, especially this year's recruiting class (Tamblyn and Devine, in particular). They were the second-best team at the invitational behind Austin Peay, but they were the only team that took a set from the Lady Govs the whole tournament.

Lady Bucs FC looked toothless against Temple, but then came back and played a very, very good game against Winthrop, with Terri Miller scoring both goals in a 2-1 win in extra time. Shout out to Ed and Cindy Kron who made the trip from Arizona to watch Sammy play.

Now, for the men's game that was on Wednesday night. ETSU should have scored at least a couple times more than they did; there was even a chance I thought Schoenfeld had buried that actually went wide on the near post. In truth, I had expected a fairly close contest with more attacking play from Winthrop, but they came out flat in the first half and ETSU brought their best for the home opener. Schoenfeld did eventually score, allowing me to pass off my blown goal call as "foreshadowing" and allowing the Bucs to pocket a 2-0 win over the reigning Big South champs.

The starting XI included local product David Geno, who opened the scoring at the 5' mark and played extremely well overall. He's very elusive and tough to defend because he always makes a complimenting run to the player with the ball. That's part of how his goal was set up on the breakaway. Coach Calabrese was very excited about him in preseason, and it's not hard to see why

There were also quite a few froshies/first-year players in the starting lineup Wednesday. Mario Samperio, Itode Fubara, Colin Pugh, and Blaike Woodruff were the starting midfielders. Pugh is a Juco transfer, the rest are true freshmen. Nate Hodges started at left back opposite Matt Reed and looked excellent. Very strong defender who can move up into the attack with ease. Fubara showed some really impressive footwork all game long, and sprung Schoenfeld for the goal that iced things in the 90th minute.

The Bucs will have their hands full again with Marshall thundering into Johnson City for some REAL Monday night football.

Instead of Coach Bartow for this week's GFOTW, we're going to honor the nearby University of Tennessee at Knoxville (you know, that school obsessed with citrus?) and their recent athletic triumphs with basketball head coach Bruce Pearl. Congratulations, coach, for winning BB:BE's Murry Bartow Game Face of the Week award for the week running from September 17 to September 24.

(Since I have no idea who to give credit to for this image, I'll simply cite MidwestSportsFan.com, since that's where I found it.)

Thanks for surfing!