Wine hath drowned more men than the sea. So, too, has overconfidence.
All last season, the UNM men’s soccer team battled to maintain humble sobriety — and lost.
Liquored up on success — and drunk with talent — the Lobos ever-so-slightly reduced their investment in altruism, instead turning toward selfishness.
Understandably: Winning, much like alcohol, makes for insatiable addicts. But because of a dependence on sheer talent, the Lobos played out of character, neglecting something that was a stronghold for past teams, something that helped the Lobos win six Mountain Pacific Federation titles and earn a trip to the NCAA National Championship in 2005. And something that is a staple of teams led by Jeremy Fishbein.
Too often UNM sipped from the flask of self-assurance, yet not enough from the vat of work ethic, forward P.J. Wilson said.
“We were more of a talented team instead of a hard-working team,” said Wilson, adding that this was the Lobos’ Achilles’ heel last year. “We just don’t want to get too sure of ourselves. We want to be humble. Talent-wise, we were great, but we came out every game thinking we were going to win, no problem.”
And they did, for the most part. The Lobos’ 2008 campaign wasn’t particularly terrible — they finished 11-6-2, but missed out on an at-large bid to the NCAA Tournament.
In spite of its relative success, the team was a bit dysfunctional. For instance, on two occasions last year, the Lobos surrendered leads — to Louisville and Washington — and both times lost the game. Records show those types of breakdowns hardly ever happen to Fishbein-coached teams. When scoring first, UNM is 83-5-9, taking into account those two blown margins last season.
Wilson said that not having player-initiated leadership — the coach can only say so much — spawned much of the Lobos’ problems.
Every win, too, was an incubator for increased egotism — even in an up-and-down year, he said.
“We were maybe trying to get it done by ourselves too much, trying to dribble a little too much last year,” Wilson said. “We didn’t have the chemistry as a team (and) just didn’t click. It was just an off year for us.”
Nothing was more telling than how the Lobos handled a rough patch stretching from Sep. 12 to Oct. 3. Their disunity was highlighted, in the same stroke of the brush, by a peak win over then-No. 1 Akron and a valley loss to Cal Poly two days later, which was followed by a three-game road trip where the Lobos went 0-2-1.
But Wilson said it was apparent the Lobos had a problem even before that. He said the win over Akron only reinforced what the team already assumed about themselves.
“I thought it was the whole season, right from the beginning, even before we beat Akron,” he said about the Lobos’ superiority complex.
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If that was the case, UNM was rudely awakened by sobering losses in that three-week period. They went 8-2 after that, but the damage was irreversible.
As a result, Wilson said UNM labored all off-season, adamant about ridding itself of an intoxicated sense of self-worth — and a propensity to coast on pure aptitude — which haunted them throughout the ’08 campaign.
“We switched gears last spring, starting right after Christmas break,” Wilson said. “We’ve been on it, working as hard as we can every day — running in the mountains, the sand dunes. That definitely helped us realize that we needed to work a lot harder at what we’re trying to get to.”
However, now the Lobos have another kink to work out, this one less daunting: overcompensation.
What would have been shots in the past were passes on Saturday. In the 84th minute of a scoreless game, UNM parlayed an offensive attack from the Dons into a breakaway.
But instead of unfurling a shot right on frame, the Lobos chose to make the extra pass to the left wing, whereupon Blake Smith’s ray whizzed wide of the goal. The Dons got the go-ahead goal two minutes later.
Needless to say, Fishbein said that pass should’ve been a shot.
“We had a bunch of chances and guys either rushed their shot or they took an extra touch,” he said.
Because of the inexorable fear of relapse, one side effect of sobriety is strict abstinence. Quite conceivably, that’s what the Lobos suffered from on Saturday — all of them apprehensive to reinvite selfish tendencies. Still, there are times when it’s suitable to take a swig of liquid courage. And then there are times when it’s appropriate to pass the bottle around.
As with everything, the key is moderation.
“We should be greedy more often,” forward Michael Green said. “We passed the ball well, but we definitely need to take our shots.”
