Men's Soccer Battles Timbers In Front Of Standing-Room-Only Crowd
April 9, 2011
CORVALLIS, Ore. - In front of a standing-room-only crowd, the Oregon State men's soccer team played with a great deal of passion and energy in a hard-fought 1-0 loss to the Portland Timbers of Major League Soccer on Saturday night at Paul Lorenz Field.
The Beavers battled to a 0-0 tie at halftime before the Timbers, who have been a professional franchise since 1975, scored in the 62nd minute. The capacity crowd gave the Beavers a standing-ovation at the end of the match and Oregon State coaches and players showed their appreciation to their opponent from the MLS for the great opportunity.
Head Coach Steve Simmons
On the intensity of the match...
"I think this was as intense as a fall game. The crowd was into it. Obviously, you have the Timbers Army here. Everybody is excited that the Timbers open at home on Thursday for the first time in MLS history. But, I tell you, we give thanks to the Timbers for giving us the opportunity to play here. I'm so proud of our guys; they competed hard. I think everybody got into it. That's good to see. We have 10 freshmen out there. I told them `that freshman fall is over. You need to start playing like an older person.' So I thought it went well."
On playing hard and losing 1-0...
"We created chances. We had three chances where we had good looks on goal. It's one thing to stop a team, a professional team, but it's another thing to create chances and I thought we created probably enough chances, a fair share of chances, to get something out of it. It could have been one or two to nil at some point. Now, of course, they had a lot of the play. But when you play a team like that, you have to absorb them. And we did. Our guys hung together and they competed. That's the number one thing I wanted to do is to compete."
On raising expectations for the team after the performance...
"Of anything, I want them to see that themselves. As a coach, you can tell them about `hey you need to do this better and need to do that better.' But when they actually feel it and see it and experience it, they know where the bar is. That's what I wanted more than anything out of this bunch is to see the bar. So every time they train, every time they are preparing, they can remember an experience like this. If we can do that against the Timbers, we can do that in the Pac-10. And that's exactly what we are trying to get out of it."
Senior Steve Spangler
On what it was like to play the Timbers...
"I felt like the first little bit, our emotions were high playing an MLS team. But after that the adrenaline rush kind of wore off and we were realized we were hanging with them and we did a good job and competed hard."
On the level of play of the Beavers...
"In the four years that I've been here, this is the best we've played against an upper-level team. This is by far the best we've competed against one of these teams. We not only possessed the ball to the best of our ability, but we actually made chances and could have come out with a win."
Junior Travis Anderson
On what it was like to play the Timbers...
"We've been working all week on being able to compete and being able to compete against anyone in the country. It doesn't matter if they are Division I or Division II or Pac-10 or an MLS team. I thought we really did that tonight and put ourselves in a position where we could have gotten a win."
On the thoughts of winning the match...
"Yeah, you could feel it building. After we had the first tackle, you could feel the team think `yeah, we've got this' and `yeah, we can actually pull this one out.' We absorbed for a lot of the game. At the end, we had two chances in the last five minutes and we really could have taken it."
Support Oregon State University Athletics by making your tax deductible donation to the Beaver Athletic Student Fund. For more information, and to purchase tickets, follow this "Everyday Champion". Follow Beaver Athletics on Twitter, Facebook and YouTube.
