Jeff Rohrman has been at the helm of the Wisconsin men’s soccer team for two seasons now and is hoping that his third will be the most successful yet. With Dayton and Evansville coming to town for the Big Toe Soccer Invitational, Wisconsin opens its season with a chance to get two key victories over squads that have NCAA tournament hopes of their own.
“Both of these teams are teams that are important for us to beat,” Rohrman said. “In terms of the RPI and all that, these guys are going to be in a position similar to where we should be at the end of the year.”
With Dayton coming just short of an NCAA berth a season ago and Evansville back in the picture after a six-season absence from the penultimate tournament, these are the teams that Wisconsin needs to beat to establish itself as an NCAA tournament team. Wins in these two games could also prove to be tiebreakers if any of these three teams end up battling for one of the last berths in November.
“When it comes down to it, at the end of the year, these are the teams we’re looking at to be sure to beat in that 50 to 100 RPI type of situation” Rohrman said.
The Badgers will open their regular season in the second game of the Big Toe Soccer Invitational against Evansville Friday. The Purple Aces, who are looking to build on a strong 9-7-3 record last season, will return 10 of their starters.
The best of the returning starters is preseason All-American Marc Burch. The junior midfielder anchors a talented team that is trying to return Evansville to its form of the ’80s and ’90s, when it made 11 straight NCAA tournament appearances.
Another junior, Dan Broxup, is a dangerous striker who will stretch the Badger defense and will need to be closely marked.
“Evansville traditionally is a very strong team,” said Rohrman. “They’ve got some good young players, so they’re going to be a good team for us to start with.”
In the second game of the tournament, Wisconsin will take on Dayton. The Flyers are coming off of a 12-5-2 season a year ago, when they were one of the last teams left out of the NCAA tournament. The Badgers will look to avenge last season’s tough 3-2 loss.
Dayton, the pre-season pick to win the Atlantic-10, brings back seven starters from last season’s squad, including Tye Stebbins and Chris Rolfe, both of whom scored four goals and had five assists last season. The Flyers will turn to a handful of freshmen to solidify their team this season, including much-heralded newcomer Aaron Swanson.
“Dayton, the past two years, has been very solid,” Rohrman said. “We actually owe them one because we had them down 2-0 there and squandered the lead.”
Wisconsin, which has already played two exhibition games this season, brings a strong forward duo of Jed Hohlbein and David Martinez into this game. The pair has combined to score four goals and three assists in the two warm-up games. The new look of a high-powered offense has Rohrman excited.
“I think we’ve got four, five, six guys who can put the ball in the net,” Rohrman said. “So that’s nice.”
With a young team that’s long on talent but short on experience, this will be an important weekend to determine how far the Badgers can go this season.
“I like where [the team] is going,” said Rohrman. “Certainly we will know more in the next couple of months, but I’m very encouraged with the way things are going for sure.”
