Northeastern is a year removed from its last visit to the MCLA National Tournament powered by Under Armour, and now they have a new coach. Can Chris Boland get the Huskies back to the Promised Land?

MCLA.us caught up with the former USC coach and Johns Hopkins standout for a “5 Questions” session.

MCLA: What’s been more of a challenge for you: resettling on the other side of the country from your last coaching gig or trying to assess your team for the 2016 season? Also, do you think it’s tougher for players to acclimate to a new coach, or a new coach to the players?

CB: Neither has really been a challenge for me, to be honest. I am originally from Maryland and have a bunch of friends and family back this way, so it’s good to be back. For any new coach, it takes time to adapt and build chemistry with a new group of faces, but overall the transition has been pretty smooth. We have a great group of returners and some new faces who have done a great job this fall and have developed some nice chemistry going into the spring. The fall was all about us and not so about other teams or even X's and O's. We were focused on competing, developing some toughness, and seeing who our leaders were.

MCLA: The Huskies were in the national tournament as recently as 2014. What kind of expectations have you put in place for this spring and how have the student-athletes responded to them?

CB: We have set high expectations for ourselves and we expect to win the PCLL every year and to win the MCLA championship. Those expectations are something that we are going to set for ourselves every single year. If you set mediocre goals, you can expect a mediocre effort. Overall, they have responded great. They know they are capable of competing at a high level if they commit themselves and hold each other accountable.

MCLA: You’ve just had fall ball to get a feel for the team, but what do envision being a strength of this year’s squad? Specifically, who are going to be some players to watch?

CB: We had a great fall and have developed some good chemistry. We have competition for spots in all areas of the field heading into the spring, which is a great situation to be in. This group of guys play hard, are tough, and play gritty. That is going to be one of our strengths this year. They don't give up and will continue to compete no matter what the situation.

That attitude has a lot to do with some of our returners. Guys like senior middie Christian Nichols, junior middie Garrett Painter, sophomore attackman Charlie Kline, junior middie Dylan McGuinness, sophomore defender Joe Silva, junior attackman Ben Lacy and sophomore middie Ben Ruzzo are all guys that we are going to count on from both a leadership and on-field production standpoint.

MCLA: Northeastern will obviously get tested in the PCLL from the likes of Boston College, UConn and New Hampshire, but what does the non-conference schedule look like? What are the key games?

CB: We are beefing up the schedule a bit and taking trips to Indiana to play Indiana University and Purdue, as well as a spring break trip to play Florida State, Florida and Tampa's JV team, which consists of all their redshirt freshmen. Most of our conference games will be played in April.

MCLA: Will this year’s version of the Huskies have a vastly different style than what was utilized under the last coaching staff or do you envision some minor tweaks along the way?

CB: It will be much different in the sense of X's and O's. We are implementing a number of different things both offensively and defensively that will require all six guys getting on the same page, being disciplined, and fundamentally sound. At the same time, we aren't trying to reinvent the wheel here and don't want guys overthinking things. As the season goes on there will be minor tweaks, but the guys have been pretty receptive and have adapted pretty well this fall to what we are trying to do.