Men's soccer dominates Seina for fourth straight win

The Bulls are on a roll. The UB men's soccer team scored three times in a span of less than 20 minutes and controlled the ball for most of the game to shut out the Siena Saints 3-0 on Sunday.

A superior defensive effort held Siena to only two shots on goal throughout the entire game.

Second-half goals from junior midfielder Erik Jaanimagi, a well struck header from junior forward Shyle Braithwaite, and a nice one-timer from sophomore forward Lee Catchpole sealed a commanding victory.

Both teams were held scoreless in the first half, however the Bulls dominated the field, barely letting Siena on their defensive side. By the second half, the Bulls had figured out how to respond to Siena's strategy and adjusted accordingly.

"We've been playing as a second-half team lately," said Jaanimagi, who scored the first goal for UB with 26 minutes left in the second half. "At halftime we figured everything out, what's going wrong, what's going right, and then we just do whatever's right."

"We didn't change anything, we just came out with the same strategy," said junior Andrae Clarke, who had two assists. "Our team is just real good when we pick it up, especially for the second half. We've proven it the last four games. We've just been putting it to these teams. Physically, they can't stay up with us. We're more fit than them and more tactical than them."

Head coach John Astudillo is not a stranger to the type of game that Siena can bring. Buffalo has played Siena several times in recent years, including a loss last season.

"We knew that they play a very fast, a very frenetic type of game," Astudillo said. "For us to play that way we can do two things. We can either stop the ball and slow down totally or we can just also step it up and frenetically defend them and attack them."

However, despite having played Siena in the past, the Bulls still needed to follow a set game plan in order to achieve victory.

"The game plan was going to be for us to try and attack the flanks," Astudillo said. "We picked up a lot of speed in the flanks, so we were playing into the middle in order to play out to the flanks."

The strategy worked on Sunday, giving the Bulls their fourth straight win and a great start, similar to last season when they went 6-0-1 in their first 7 games.

The crowd was cheering constantly in response to favorable Bulls calls. One female fan even took the responsibility of becoming the Bulls' unofficial cheerleader, inspiring the crowd with rhyming chants.

"We kicked butt," said freshman Megan Stratton, "I think we're going to have a really good season."

With Siena out of the way, UB can look forward to going on the road to take on St. Bonaventure.

"St. Bonaventure just beat one of our rivals in the (Mid-American Conference), Western Michigan, spanked them two nothing yesterday," Astidillo said. "They'll have a good team, they're very well organized and have a couple of really good players. Garcia number 10 and number 11 Okamawa, they're excellent. We'll have to defend against them, but we'll also have to attack the heck out of them."