In sports there is a saying, “the more shots you take, the more shots you make.” Many in the sporting world believe this, but it was made famous by the run-and-gun system Paul Westhead used at Loyola-Marymount University in basketball. That sounds great in theory, but what happens when the strategy doesn’t work?
The men’s soccer team is faced with this problem. They have taken more or the same amount of shots than every opponent so far this season. The problem is they are still 2-4 on the season and with conference playing starting today against West Florida they need to find an answer.
Right now Union scores .857 goals per game, which is last in the Gulf South Conference. The problem with Union is not the amount of shots they are taking, but the amount of quality shots. This is seen at least a little bit from the shots on goal (SOG) stat, that shows how many shots were actually on the goal and had to get saved by the keeper or went in.
At first glance being fifth in the conference in SOG is not bad, but when taken in context of how many shots the team takes total it is not so great. The percentage of shots Union takes that are on goal is currently 37.7 percent which is last in the conference where the average is 43.4%. That’s difference between Union taking 6.1 SOG and 7.1 in a game—that’s a whole shot for Union to use if they were on par with the rest of the conference in shots on goal.
Some of this is due to players starting at new positions and only five players starting through all six games in the season, and several of those have started at different positions. This does mean that chemistry on the field still needs to be developed for the newer players with the more experienced ones. However, even some of the more experienced players are trying to get used to a new position which slows down the teams ability to run the offense.
One of those players is Clayton Martin, senior sports management major and team captain, who has transitioned from midfielder to forward after a couple of games in the season. Martin is currently second in the conference in shots per game with 3.57 and his teammate, midfielder Andre Silva is currently seventh with 2.86. The offense will need Martin to convert more of his shots into points, and that’s going to come from better placement.
“We’ve worked on placement all week in practice,” Martin said. “We’ve been running drills that force us to put the ball in the lower corners of the goal which is important because at times we try to get too pretty with the shot which doesn’t work.”
The team is hoping these drills, getting know each other and getting to know the offense better will help as they head into conference play. In the brutal Gulf South Conference, fixing this problem will be key to success.
