NCAA Division I Men's Soccer: Duke v. Georgetown (August 16th)
Pre-season Exhibition Match between Duke University and Georgetown University on August 16, 2024 at Koskinen Stadium.
Duke University
It was a battle of the formations as Duke University played with a 3-5-2 and Georgetown rolled out a standard 4-4-2 where the midfield numbers advantage seemed to come in handy for the home side as they controlled large segments of the match.
Ruben Mesalles captained the Blue Devils from a center back position in their final exhibition match leading into the Thursday season openers and showed promise in his newfound role. The Real Salt Lake draftee looked comfortable with the back three as he was accompanied by Niclas Wittur and Kamran Acito. As the primary free kick specialist when it comes to providing service, if Duke can capitalize on set pieces, Mesalles could be towards the top of the assists leader board. During the run of play, he also adds more of a centralized ball moving component to their back line due to his accomplished passing ability.
Wittur is probably one of the older players you’d be able to find in NCAA Division I at the age of 27. He joined the Blue Devils from Wingate University in Division II. As Acito begins his junior season, he’s still only 20 years old. I’ve written about him in my USL League Two Metropolitan Division Prospect Team over the summer and he’ll continue to be on my shortlist of favorite domestic center backs in the country. Overall, it’s an intelligent group that’s back stopped by a top-rated goalkeeper, so they’ll be fine as long as the lack of defensive width isn’t exposed. The formation had two wingers rather than more traditional wing backs, so John Kerr put a lot of trust in his back three and defensive midfield.
Winger Drew Kerr had a good performance, scoring Duke’s first goal of the evening after cutting inside to have a strike from 25 yards out.
Luke Thomas may seem like an unassuming player at first glance, but the more I see him, the more I think he’s one of the best left footed crossers of the ball at this level. I still remember the perfectly placed cross for Jose Ortega against NC State during the spring season and each of his crosses against Georgetown were well-placed. The reason why Thomas has stood out to me is because of how many times I see disappointing corner kicks or set pieces, easily cleared or collected crosses, and over hit deep crosses from other wingers. The art of wide delivery doesn’t seem to be focused on as much as you’d imagine, especially since some teams simply don’t play that style anyway. Having consistent and dangerous crosses will be important for Ulfur Bjornsson and Adam Luckhurst, and Thomas’s ability to deliver those has seen him get preseason opportunities in a starting role. Up until now, the Charlotte native has only played 1,411 minutes across three seasons at Duke, but if he can provide the forwards with chances, he should have an uptick in minutes. He even got himself on the box score with a goal. I’m not projecting anything about his future, but I wanted to give some recognition for the few times I’ve seen him.
Felix Barajas came in and also spent some time as the left winger to good effect and Andrew Myerson did as well on the other side, so there will inevitably be rotation for the wide playmaking roles.
For the core group of midfielders, I continue to be impressed by Colton Pleasants as he’s bounced back from injuries to become an impact player for John Kerr. He served as the attacking midfielder (10) with Trevor Burns (8) and Kenny Hot (6). Pleasants and Burns both recently transferred in from UNC Wilmington and Georgetown, and Burns was given the start against his former team.
After losing star midfielders like Nick Pariano and Wayne Frederick to the professional level, Kerr and his staff have added those graduate transfers to assist in the reloading efforts, but the returner who I could imagine getting more starts in the advanced or box-to-box midfield role is Bull Jorgensen. He came in with the second rotation of midfielders and provided a lot of strong movement to connect the midfield north-to-south, so I’m high on a midfield combination of Hot, Jorgensen and Pleasants, but in general, there are plenty of contributors, so who knows who will lock down those spots over the course of the year. Other returner Kenny Hot has started all but two games so far in his Duke career, so that’ll be the ongoing constant in the holding role in front of the defensive group as the primary deep lying distributor.
As for the freshmen, I expect Jamie Kabuusu to be one of those contributors after a successful evening at both center midfield and right wing back positions. The 18-year-old has recently represented the Grenada National Team at the U20 level over the summer.
Duke head out to San Diego, California for an extended weekend trip as they face the University of San Diego and UC San Diego before hosting Grand Canyon next Friday.
Georgetown University
To quickly explain the graphic at the start, Georgetown wore training shirts for the exhibition, so it was hard to identify the players on the far side of the field. And I’m working on getting a better contact lens prescription…
Kicking things off has to be Max Jennings, who heads into the season with a lot to live up to as the Big East Preseason Defensive Player of the Year. As a senior captain, he’ll want to keep up the performances while he prepares for his opportunity at the professional level. While the focus is surely on the near term mission at hand for Georgetown, he could be joining Ruben Mesalles and Josh Jones as Real Salt Lake drafted defenders from last December, which was quite an impressive haul for Kurt Schmid and Pablo Mastroeni. Jennings is also coming off a USL League Two summer with FC Motown STA. In the competitive Metropolitan Division, Motown assembled a fantastic roster that Jennings helped lead as the second-best performing defense, only losing once in the regular season to finish second in the division.
As one Houston Dynamo academy defender departs the program, another comes on board, and that’s Tate Lampman. One of the big losses from last year’s roster was Kieran Sargeant as he ended up signing a homegrown player contract with the club to join a solid incoming rookie class of Ousmane Sylla, Stephen Annor Gyamfi and Obafemi Awodesu. Working alongside Jennings was the collegiate new man, who made his MLS NEXT Pro debut as a 16-year-old while appearing 17 times over the 2023 season. Unfortunately for him, the Big East Conference doesn’t select an All-Freshman Team otherwise he’d be towards the top of that shortlist already. In the early days, I don’t see any reason for him not to continue starting for Brian Wiese. On the evening, he handled himself well against an experienced Duke attack. He ultimately aims to take over full-time for All-Conference First Team center back Kenny Nielsen now that he’s a professional at LAFC 2. In a few weeks, Lampman will celebrate his upcoming 18th birthday when they travel to James Madison University on September 9th.
With all the mention of the recently drafted Hoyas, maybe Blaine Mabie will see his name added to the eligible players list for the 2025 MLS SuperDraft at the end of his senior season. The center midfielder was very active in the Friday night contest and his influence was noticeable, and against a three-man midfield of Duke, it was needed. He scored the opening goal as he pick-pocketed Duke as they were trying to build from the back and he registered another couple of chances, so we’ll see what the Chicago area native can showcase in 2024. When I last saw them during the Spring Soccer Cup competition, Joe Buck partnered with Mabie in the middle of the park. Against the Blue Devils, Wiese gave Julian Barrios Cristales the start and even though I assume Mabie and Buck will reunite as the first-choice pairing, I felt as though Barrios had a tidy and skillful showing.
In the efforts of translating the midfield work into attack, Georgetown will count on another drafted player in Zach Zengue. The junior comes back to the team after being selected in Round 2 by the Columbus Crew. After a breakout season where he started every game for the Hoyas and tallied 5 goals and 6 assists, I had a feeling that the Crew would go for him since his older brother was selected out of Dayton in the previous year.
Without the help of Jacob Murrell, there will be added pressure on Zengue to spark the offensive efforts along with consistent veteran Marlon Tabora and highly touted newcomer Mitchell Baker. He’s a 6’4” Australian forward who spent the past two years at Northwood School where United Soccer Coaches named him as an All-American in 2023 after an impressive 141 goals during his two and a half year stint at the Lake Placid based boarding school. It’ll probably come down to which players can find form early on and stay consistent because Max Viera and Mateo Ponce Ocampo are also capable contributors on the wings.
It’s not the easiest of starts for Georgetown as they travel up to the University of Pittsburgh for their only ACC test of the regular season. Then they’ll go straight into a match against their only Big Ten opponent when they face the Maryland Terrapins on Sunday, August 25th. They begin their 2024 campaign as the 16th ranked team in the nation.
Additional Notes
From a coaching standpoint, there are always things to learn and details to pull out from watching different systems. I’d say, if you like a sequence of play or a particular movement from a player, why not diagram it and allow your players to learn from those ideas? It can be as simple or complex as you want.
In the exhibition matches, we’ve already seen coaches explain to their players what the desired formation looks like in defense, in attack, and with certain player movement packages. This is a basic example from Georgetown and an overhead view of their 4-4-2 in the different phases. In the defensive third, it’s a very structured shape and as the ball shifts from side-to-side, they stay connected and compact. As Duke attempted to get closer to goal, they'd collapse to narrow the gaps. The forwards often dropped to protect the midfield line rather than overdo it and aggressively press against the Duke back three.
In attack, the outside midfielders and full backs advanced, while also occasionally finding somebody to occupy the otherwise vacant 10 position (i.e. Zengue dropping in and roaming, or Van Horn moving inward, leaving the width provided by Stafford). If the one center midfielder advances, like Blaine Mabie, the full back opposite to the ball side could move inside as well (shown below).
Though these are simple breakdowns, I added this section for potential youth coaches who may be trying to explain or show the intent of their formation and how it looks against a prospective opponent. I’ve found that showing diagrams helps the younger players understand their on-field relationships in different scenarios.