Ian McIntyre didn’t sugarcoat it. He was blunt, and he was honest. When his team travels to Tamp, Fla., this weekend, it will face a very, very tough South Florida squad.

‘There is a reason why they were ranked at the top and we were ranked at the bottom last year as well as preseason,’ he said.

McIntyre didn’t hide that from his players, either. He told them exactly what to expect come Saturday.

‘He didn’t lie to us,’ forward Federico Agreda said. ‘He told us the truth. They’re a great team.’

With that honest, straight-forward verbiage from their head coach, the Syracuse (1-4-3, 0-0-1 Big East) men’s soccer team prepares to face South Florida this weekend. In the Bulls, the Orange faces its best opponent so far this season. South Florida (5-2-1, 0-1-0 Big East) began the season ranked No. 16 in the NSCAA poll and already has a win over a Top 10 team. SU looks to continue its three-match unbeaten streak, but it will need to pull a major upset in order to do so.

In reality, Saturday’s game is a matchup of two programs that are near opposites of one another. The Bulls have reached the NCAA tournament in each of the past three seasons. In 2008, the team reached the Elite Eight after winning the Big East tournament championship for the first time in school history.

Syracuse, on the other hand, has only qualified for the Big East tournament twice since 2000. It’s been 26 years since the Orange reached the NCAA tournament.

‘It’s a quality team,’ McIntyre said. ‘A well-coached, quality team. They have not just 11 players, but they have a lot of good quality coming off the bench as well. We know that we’ll be challenged.’

The Bulls have proved that already in 2010 with a 2-1 win over then-No. 9 Ohio State. That win brought USF back into the national polls after a disappointing opening-game loss dropped them out.

‘I actually watched them on TV against UConn last week, and they looked pretty good even though they ended up losing,’ SU midfielder Geoff Lytle said.

That’s in direct contrast to the Orange, who looked anything but good in a dismal double-overtime draw against Canisius in its last game.

For the sixth time this season, SU allowed its opponents to score the game’s first goal. Constantly having to play from behind, the team has failed to overcome any of its six deficits. The Orange lost four of those six games.

With that in mind, McIntyre and the players are trying to get out of the destructive habit that is coming out flat. Agreda feels that if the Orange can manage to score first, it would give the team a huge boost to actually be playing with a lead.

‘(Scoring a goal early) would bring us that confidence that we haven’t felt yet,’ Agreda said. ‘I think it would be a good push for us, especially at their house. It will knock them down and create a better game environment for us.’

One way SU can do that is by taking advantage of midfielder Nick Roydhouse’s left foot. He has scored each of the last four goals for the Orange and has tallied four times as many points as anyone else on the team.

A specialist on set pieces, Roydhouse has proven dangerous on both free kicks and corners. He delivers a good ball into the middle of the field where his teammates hope to get on the end of it.

‘One thing we would like to take advantage of is our ability to score on restarts,’ Lytle said. ‘Nick can put great services in, and we have guys that can just get on the end of balls.’

If scoring hadn’t proved difficult enough for the Orange, USF’s goalkeeper won’t make it any easier Saturday night. Jeff Attinella is the reigning Big East Goalkeeper of the Year and a 2009 Division-I All-America First Team selection. He already has five shutouts this season. And on the other side, the Orange has already been shut out three times this season.

And one short, concise sentence from McIntyre summed up the current state of Syracuse soccer as it prepares to face one of Big East’s top teams.

Said McIntyre: ‘I’m sure there’s not a lot of people outside of our locker room expecting too much.’

mjcohe02@syr.edu

Published on September 29, 2010 at 12:00 pm

Contact Michael: mjcohe02@syr.edu | @Michael_Cohen13