Ashe, newcomers to lead potent offensive attack

Marcus Storey? Gone.

Jamie Watson? Bye-bye.

Tim Merritt? See ya later.

Corey Ashe? O.K., so one of out four ain’t bad.

Actually, that very well could be the case for the 2005 North Carolina men’s soccer team.

Forwards Storey and Watson, who along with Ashe (a junior forward) led the Tar Heels with 18 points apiece last year, were snatched up in the 2005 MLS SuperDraft. Center back Tim Merritt, the defensive anchor and unquestioned team leader, followed suit, and those departures stripped preseason No. 17 UNC of more than 40 percent of its offense, not to mention valuable upperclassman leadership.

First glance might suggest that the Tar Heels, who finished last season with a disappointing 10-9-2 record after a preseason ranking of sixth in the country, will have their work cut out for them, especially on offense. Coach Elmar Bolowich, however, takes a decidedly different view.

“I think overall our team will score more goals than we scored last year,” he says. “We’ll be more of a threat this year to teams because of the depth and the mobility we have up front. We still have speed with Ashe and (junior forward) Ben Hunter, but it can’t just come from Corey Ashe — it has to be a shared load.”

Hunter, an NAIA All-American who transferred to UNC from the University of Rio Grande in Ohio, will be expected to take on a sizeable share of that load, as will freshman forward Stephen Bickford, the 2004 NSCAA/adidas High School National Player of the Year.

Ashe, for one, is confident that the relationship between the strikers will be a productive one.

“The chemistry up front, it’s coming quick,” he says. “We’re still learning from each other, but I don’t think it’ll take that long. … I think the best way to approach it is for me to know that I have a good supporting cast. I mean, we lost two valuable assets, but we picked up some great players.

“I do think with the addition of (Hunter and Bickford), it takes a little bit of the pressure off me because they’re just as good as I am. Defenders will have to change the way they play me because they’re just as much of a threat.”

As for the defense, Bolowich says he’s confident that junior Ted Odgers, who started 16 of 21 games for the Tar Heels last season, can slide into Merritt’s vacated center back position without missing a beat.

What’s more, UNC returns goalkeepers Ford Williams, a senior captain, and mop-topped junior Justin Hughes. They’ll combine to form a steady presence on a relatively inexperienced defense, one that will try to emulate its performance in the second half of last season (when it allowed just 10 goals in 10 games) rather than the first half (19 in 11).

Still, the defense could surrender six goals a game, and it might not matter, at least not according to the half-joking Ashe.

“We had trouble putting the ball in the back of the net last year," he says. "If you would’ve asked us last year to score seven goals, we wouldn’t have been able to. This year, we could.”

 

Contact the Sports Editor at sports@unc.edu.