Creighton showed their skills last Sunday night in front of 5,000 plus Creighton fans in their dismantling of Drexel. First year head coach Elmar Bolowich has his team playing an aggressive, offensive-minded style of soccer that is entertaining and effective.
We caught up with Coach Bolowich to talk about the Jays’ first home game and the two games this weekend.
WBR: You had your first true home game this past weekend with a pretty good crowd; what did you take away from the game?
EB: I had expectations coming into the game about the crowd, as I had heard that Creighton usually gets pretty good attendance with some good fans. I was very, very, very pleasantly surprised at the crowd. The community, the students, and the University all showed up and gave us tremendous support. As a player, I would have loved to play in front of a crowd like that.
As far as the game itself, I think we saw two different halves. The game was defiantly 0-0 longer than I would have liked. With opening the season at home, the guys were a bit nervous and antsy. There has been a lot of hype and expectations on this team and I think in the first half, they were just a bit nervous. At halftime we really loosened up and I told the guys that we needed to focus and play our game. We went out in the second half we dominated. We played much better and were able to impose our aggressive style. They guys were calm and we were able to come away with a good 3-0 victory.
WBR: How big of a benefit is a crowd like that?
EB: It is huge. It is the reason guys come to play at Creighton. They want to play against top competition and they want to do it with great support. You feed off that energy and it really gets you up to play.
WBR: It seemed that Drexel packed the defense a bit more in the second half. With your aggressive style of play, how will that sort of defense hinder your attack?
EB: We knew coming into the season that we would face teams that would pack their side of the field and we train for that. When you play that sort of defense, you need to be sharp with your passes and limit your mental mistakes. I told the guys at half that we would be playing with 21 guys on one half, so we need to be on. You have a much smaller space with that may players in one spot, so you need to be accurate. Like I said, we expect it and we train for it.
WBR: Ethan played a great game and seemed to be all over the field. After the final whistle, he seemed a bit frustrated or disappointed that he was unable to put one in. Is that his competitive nature coming out?
EB: Ethan played a great game and was a bit frustrated that we was not able to finish on some good shots. The effort he puts in is second to none and is one of the hardest workers I have coached. To put in the effort he did and come away empty handed is a bit frustrating and he had the right to be.
WBR: You will face Fordham tonight, what can we expect?
EB: You will probably see a similar game to the one we played on Sunday. They may come out and be aggressive and look to spread out the field, but they may pack it in like Drexel did. We will look to impose our aggressive style on the game, and that is all we can do.
WBR: After your game on Friday, you have a pretty quick turn around and head out to face DePaul. How important will your depth be this weekend?
EB: It will be huge. As I have said before, I did not make the schedule for this season. DePaul will have had an entire week to train for us as they do not have a game on Friday. I would have had them play on Friday so we would be on a more even field. They played last weekend and have had plenty of time to rest and get healthy. Thankfully, we are deep enough that we can throw out 6-7 guys and it till not effect our game much. Depending on how the game goes on Friday, we may be using a lot of our bench and keep some legs rested.