Every Friday in the fall, WBR and Sun Valley Landscaping will bring you timely content about Creighton soccer. For years, we’ve called it Futbol Friday. We hope you enjoy!
“This is supposed to be an exhibition!”
Technically, the Creighton Bluejays men’s soccer team won’t play a match that counts until next weekend, with Elmar Bolowich’s Jays host the Stanford Cardinal. But tonight’s exhibition against No. 21 Wisconsin at Morrison Stadium will challenge Creighton in all the same ways a regular season match would.
So, even though the match doesn’t count in the record books, we caught up with Bolowich to discuss the Badgers, the Bluejays’ first exhibition, and some of the finer points of CU soccer.
WBR: Creighton was recently picked third in the pre-season Big East poll. What do you and your guys take away from that?
Bolowich: I don’t really look at rankings. I try to focus on the rankings at the end of a season, because at this point we have not even played a game, and some teams come in with almost entirely new squads, so it’s a different dynamic. You really cannot go by the history of the previous year. Unless of course you return all your starters.
WBR: Speaking of which, you return all of your starters except for Zach Barnes and Eric Miller. Does that make a big difference in your eyes heading in to the season?
Bolowich: Well, I think it’s good for us, in that we can establish a little more momentum and already have defined roles on the team, compared to having to do that when you’re inserting five new starters. Yet we still have a lot of work ahead of us and plenty of things to figure out. For the most part I am very optimistic about the group I have this year.
WBR: The Jays traveled up to Wisconsin last weekend to take on UW-Milwaukee. What did you and the squad take away from that match?
Bolowich: Surprisingly, after only three days practice, I felt we were fairly organized; we played five new players in our lineup so it was very positive from that point of view. We were a little rusty going forward because the timing was off, but we changed a few things around opposed to years past. When you talk about timed runs and timed passes, the finer details, those just come with more practice and games.
WBR: What are some of the biggest things you hope to improve on from last year?
Bolowich: I think we need to learn a little bit from what we didn’t do last year, and be stronger, be mentally tougher. Those were some of the things we focused on this off-season. There was definitely an interest in the team improving those things over the winter and in the spring. This year we are not looking for excuses we are looking for solutions, and from now on our players will need to think independently and come up with the solutions without the help from the sideline.
WBR: How big of a boost is Sean Kim getting back for another season?
Bolowich: Yeah that was fantastic, he’s such a team player. He’s fast, he adds something to our front line. That being said it’s his third ACL injury, and that’s never easy to come back from. Although he does look stronger than ever, he just needs more game time. It’s been over seven or eight months without a competitive game. I think Sean might look a little bit sketchy in the beginning of the season, but by the end of the season he will be alright.
WBR: Can you address your formation switch for the fans out there?
Bolowich: What we want to do is look at playing with two forwards instead of just one target forward. We’ve played with just one forward for the last three years. Ethan Finlay was an excellent player for that system initially, over the last couple years we’ve struggle to replicate that type of player. Right now I’m looking at the personnel and I think with the forwards we have this year we can play with two. The idea is that hopefully we are harder to predict, harder to defend. That being said when we commit another player to the front we lose someone from our midfield. We’ve brought in a few players that will be perfect for the midfield role as well.