I feel I need to respond in defense of Coach Manning, as someone who has faced his team twice at different points in the season and who can also compare this year's team with last year's.
Last year's Bluffton team was, as we saw them, a straight-ahead team of hard knocks. We got there late after a 2-1/2 hour bus ride with less than 20 minutes to get off the bus and warm up; long story short, we were sluggish, never truly "got off the bus," and got run over by a team that aggressively went after the ball and took it straight down our throats.
In our first meeting with Coach Manning's team this year, at the season's start, both teams were still finding their groove, and there was still a lot of that straight-ahead, long-ball play. I criticized my team for getting drawn into a game of kickball in the second half, and we settled into our passing control game to pull off the win in OT.
At the end of season meeting, we went in feeling that we were playing much better soccer than we had a month or two before...but when we got to Bluffton, we found that they were playing a whole different brand of soccer as well. Speed of play had improved, passing, ball touches, and team shape had improved, and there were several instances where they were slicing and dicing us with passes where before they were relying on straight-ahead speed and physicality. We went into that game a better team than we were before, and they still gave us everything we could handle, even finding a way to get a ball in the net after a red card left them short-handed. They weren't just better at what they did--they were doing better things.
Bluffton did play a very tough schedule this year, and their record reflects that, but the result of the season in the pressure cooker, so to speak, was obvious to me. The competition has made them better, and they have stepped up not only their effort but their tactics to reflect that competition. That's the kind of mindset change that Sconners is talking about...where you take your lumps until you learn to do it right, but then you come out the other side as a different level of team.
At Berkeley we've had plenty of those years of similar records as Bluffton's 2011 season, with the likes of Wando, Summerville, West Ashley, James Island, etc. filling our schedules in their heyday of success. I think it's made us a stronger team in the end, and I think again that's the mindset Coach Manning is trying to create at Bluffton.
Next year should be very interesting.
