The Frenzy? Just Getting Started!
Image courtesy of Oregon State Athletics
Beaver Nation is awesome. How else do you explain a season high 912 people showing up for a men’s soccer non-league game that was rescheduled from Saturday to Friday just a few days prior? Also, credit to whoever made the decision to move it so it didn’t interfere with homecoming activities or the football game on Saturday.
The Beavs rewarded the fans by putting together their best offensive performance of the year with a season-high three goals against the No. 6 nationally ranked Pilots from the University of Portland. Better yet, those three goals came from three different players, Clarence Awoudor, Mo Thiam, and Ellis Spikner all found the back of the net for Terry Boss’s side. Even better, six Beavs recorded a shot on the day. When everyone’s a threat to score, the opposing backline can’t key on anyone. Never was this more evident than on the final, game clinching goal in the 81st minute from Ellis Spikner, when three Pilot defenders were so concerned with who had the ball on the break, nobody peeled off to mark a streaking Spikner, who calmly finished past a diving Pilots keeper to put the game out of reach.
Mo Thiam, who was so instrumental in the run to the Elite 8 last year after Adrian Molina Diaz’s injury, is starting to find his stride as we head down the stretch of the regular season. After failing to score on his first 14 shots this year, Thiam has netted a goal in each of the last two games. Thiam tends to score in bunches, as he had a 3-game goal scoring streak last season too. After getting OSU on the board vs. Stanford last week, Thiam’s confidence continued to show Friday night, as he received a pass just outside the box and then calmly turned the Pilot defender like a rotisserie chicken at Costco for a few dribbles before finishing with his left foot in the side netting far post to double the Beaver lead in the 30th minute.
The game against the Pilots was OSU’s fourth game against a nationally ranked team in their last six outings, and the Beavs have put up three wins and a draw in those four games. It may not be a coincidence that this run started shortly after Awoudor joined the team. Like Thiam, he has tallied a goal in each of the last two games, and he also recorded his first two assists of the season Friday night against the Pilots. His speed and skill up front have provided the Beavs with the scoring threat they sorely needed. The Beavs have logged six goals in the past three games, after scoring just seven goals in their first eight contests.
All of this to say we are finally starting to see the team that was the preseason co-favorites for the Pac-12 title (Side note: How do only six schools in this conference have men’s soccer, with one of them being San Diego State? Look at this map of universities with Division 1 men’s soccer programs:
Get it together, rest of the western United States!)
For several weeks now, I’ve been trying to make the case that the wins were coming for this team and their record didn’t accurately reflect how good the Beavs were. Friday night, the Beavs will get a chance to put the rest of the nation on notice that last year wasn’t a fluke, as they host the unanimous top ranked team in the nation, the Washington Huskies, to Lorenz Field. The Huskies come in unbeaten, a 1-1 draw vs. Air Force their only blemish in 13 matches this season. Most teams would be intimidated by this, but almost exactly one year ago to the day, the Beavs handed Washington their only loss of the 2021 regular season. Let’s make Friday night a bit of déjà vu for the Huskies. OSU also currently sits 24th in the latest RPI Rankings, so a win or draw vs. UW (2nd in RPI) would go a long way towards a postseason berth. Friday looks to be the last day with temperatures above 60 degrees for a while, so grab your tickets and join the frenzy!
Things for Beaver Nation to Gnaw On:
The Return of Miley! Things don’t have to make sense to make sense. There’s no real connection between “Sweet Caroline” and Fenway Park, but it works there in a way that it doesn’t anywhere else. After the coup staged on Party in the USA by the Blink 182 cabal at the USC game, enough questions were raised that they brought Miley back to Reser, and god damn if the Beavs didn’t win again, giving Miley Cyrus the longest home win streak (9 games) since Dennis Erickson’s 1999-00 teams won 9 straight home games. Don’t mess with a streak, OSU. If we ever lose a home game again, then you can consider replacing Party in the USA. Until then, Miley stays.
Both OSU baseball and softball had fall scrimmages/games on campus last week, which got me thinking - there’s a fall “season” for golf, rowing, baseball, and softball. Track/Cross Country have the fall/spring thing too. Football has spring practices. Soccer plays a spring schedule. Do Winter sports just get screwed on the extra games? I guess hoops teams can go overseas once every four years in the summer, but it seems like there’s some inequity here in the competitions.
Mike Hass was honored on Saturday night for his induction into the College Football Hall of Fame. The stats say that less than .02% of all college football players have made the Hall of Fame, but it’s an even smaller percentage of those that began their careers as a walk-on. Congrats to one of the best to ever do it.
