Tonight at 7 p.m. on Dail Field, the men’s soccer team will take on Winthrop for both teams’ season opener. In an exhibition against UNC-Greensboro last week, the Wolfpack defeated the Spartans 3-1, with all three goals in the second half, two of which came in the span of five minutes.

Even with Winthrop’s titles last season–Big South regular season and tournament champions–senior defender Korede Aiyegbusi said the Wolfpack is not worried.

“You can bring a team from anywhere that has a great record,” Aiyegbusi said. “As a player, you shouldn’t be worried about anyone’s record. [We want to] come out and do what we can.”

Offensively, the Pack had a great finish to the 2008 season, finishing second in scoring offense in the ACC and 10th in the nation. Redshirt senior forward Ronnie Bouemboue, who was a contributor to the Pack’s scoring attack, said the team wants to play the way they did when they completed the season with five wins out of their last six games.

“Tonight we’re just expecting to come out strong and pick up where we left off last year, on a hot streak,” Bouemboue, who scored two goals against UNC-G, said. “We want to take it up from there and continue what we started, hopefully building better team unity.”

Aiyegbusi said the team hopes to start strong and give 100 percent during all 90 minutes of playing time.

“[To win] we need to come out strong and score quickly,” Aiyegbusi said. “We need to gain the lead from the get-go and not allow any silly mistakes.”

N.C. State has won every season-opening game since 2005, which builds some pressure for the team to come out and obtain the same results as in prior seasons, but Aiyegbusi said the team is not feeling any negative effects from the pressure.

“There’s pressure to win, but, for me, I don’t feel that pressure as much because I’ve only been here one season before,” Aiyegbusi said. “It seems like now whenever we practice we don’t worry about that. We can see that we’ve improved since last year. What’s on people’s mind is that we’re going to come out and play great tonight.”

Though Winthrop has the Pack’s attention and respect, Bouemboue said his team’s experience playing in the ACC has them anything but scared going into tonight’s game.

“We are in one of the toughest conferences in the nation. [Playing Winthrop] doesn’t scare us,” Bouemboue said. “We’ll treat this game just like every other and take it head-on.”