Since we last talked with Elmar Bolowich, his Creighton Bluejays soccer team knocked off fellow top 10 squad UC Irvine and picked up a conference road win at Bradley. This weekend the Jays head out for their final road match of the regular season, against Southern Illinois-Edwardsville.
We caught up with Bolowich before the game to talk about the last two matches and the upcoming stretch of Valley soccer.
White & Blue Review: Bradley is considered by many Creighton soccer fans as one of our more heated rivals in the MVC. How was the pace of the game on Tuesday?
Elmar Bolowich: The tempo was good. Considering the rain and winds, I think we made the best of it. Bradley played a competitive game. It was not overly physical or anything, I believe there was a total of 4 yellows, 3 on them and 1 on us. But that just shows it was competitive and the guys were playing to win. I felt like we came out strong but we were really able to control the game after the first 20 minutes.
WBR: I am not sure if you are one of those coaches that never reads the paper, but the head coach of UC Irvine had a few comments after the loss on Saturday about the physicality of the game and the lack of calls by the officials. Do you have any reaction to those comments?
EB: I was disappointed by the quote. It seemed to me that he must have been watching a different movie. We try and impose our style with our play and control of the game, not by playing physical. I thought that the officials let a lot go on both ends. Now, I don’t know if he made those comments directly after the game and he was frustrated, but like I said, we impose our style with our skill and play, not physicality.
WBR: You will be heading out for your final regular season road game of the season when you head to SIU Edwardsville. Are you excited to be off the road?
EB: The issue right now is that with our schedule and midterms, we are not exactly where I would like us to be at this point in the season. This is a time that you work on sharpening your game and using the practice time to address the issues that you have seen so far. With the amount of time we have spent on the road and midterms, we have had few practices with everyone available and healthy. We will be glad to be done with our road trips.
WBR: The first RPI rankings came out earlier in the week. Were you surprised that Creighton is #3?
EB: Not really. It is what I expected. We had a tough stretch where we played some really good teams, and teams with good schedules as well. With us going to Maryland, even though we lost, we were able to inherit their schedule in the RPI formula and that is a big boost for us. The real RPI figure is after all the games have been played.
WBR: It seems that every year, even if the Bluejays win all of their conference games, CU tends to drop in the RPI. With the conference season in full swing, how do you see our RPI moving if we were to win the remaining games?
EB: If we were to win out, I would expect our RPI to be in the top 8, meaning we would get one of the top 8 seeds in the tournament allowing us to host up to the quarters or even right before the College Cup. However, if we were to slip up, that will really hurt our RPI. The other thing that you don’t want to have happen is for us to get paired up with Central Arkansas in the conference tournament. They are the lowest rated RPI team in our league, and even if we win that game, it hurts our number.
WBR: Do you have an injury report?
EB: Dion (Acoff) has had a few groin issues come up and that is why he played limited time against Bradley. We will take another look at him, but we may need to sit him for a few games just to get him healed.