Needs players’ years

The Badgers improved to 5-5-0 after their Wednesday-night victory over the University of Illinois-Chicago Flames (5-3-0). Senior captain Erol Goknur came off the bench to score what turned out to be the game-winning goal at 27:09 into the match. UW’s Nick Van Sicklen added another goal at 68:25 on a Goknur assist, and the game ended with the Badgers victorious 2-0.

The story of the night belonged to UW freshman goalkeeper Jake Settle. His first start ended with his first win and first shutout. He came away with three saves in the match as he filled in for captain goalkeeper Eric Hanson, who is nursing a slight injury as he prepares for the Big Ten opener Sunday. In the 57th minute, Flame’s offensive standout and team-scoring leader, Dennis King, had the team’s best offensive chance on a breakaway, but his shot was deflected over the net with a leaping save by Settle.

“He made a great save on [the shot] — tremendous tip and everything else,” head coach Jeff Rohrman said. “That’s Jake’s strengths: he’s quick, he’s athletic, he’s able to make those saves.”

“[King] came in, someone laid off a bad ball and Hohlbein couldn’t get to it. I came out and tried to cut off his angle. He kind of turned his hips so I knew where he was going. He should’ve cut it; I would have been screwed,” Settle said. “Instead he played in the middle. I saw it, and I started praying, ‘Please go over, please go over, please go over,’ and it ended up going over, so I was pretty happy.”

UW outshot its opponent 12-9 and put twice as many of its shots on goal, 6-3. Each team had only one corner kick, with UW’s coming in the opening minutes of the game.

The Badgers started the game without any of their captains on the field. Jed Hohlbein and Jake Settle were wearing the armbands to start the game, and Goknur entered around the 25th minute.

Goknur scored and had three points on the night, including his second career goal. The goal was set up off a throw-in from John Scripp to Aaron Hohlbein. Hohlbein passed it back to Scripp and then ran to the corner as if to receive another pass. Scripp faked the pass and cut up to the top corner of the penalty box and crossed the ball.

“Erol played good this past weekend; he had a couple great days of training. His mobility was great tonight, his concentration was great, and for sure on the first goal when that ball was ripped across, a lot of guys are going to take two touches to put that on goal and he did it in one,” coach Jeff Rohrman said. “You could just see he was seeing things a lot quicker tonight and playing a lot quicker; he had a good game.”

“I just came in the game, and I was looking for an opportunity. I saw the ball come across and slid it in,” Goknur said. “We played all right. We could have done a couple things better, but overall we did pretty well, took care of business.”

“I don’t think it’s as complete a game as we can put together. We had too many technical breakdowns for a team of this caliber. At half time I told them, ‘You guys are all better than what you’ve shown.'” Rorhman said. “You look at the chances we had in the first half; we should have been able to walk away 3-0 in the first half. While it was a good game, I wouldn’t say it was a great game. We found a way to win it and finished a couple good chances.”