The Wisconsin men’s soccer team fell to 1-4 in Big Ten conference play and 9-9 overall after Sunday afternoon’s 1-0 loss to Michigan State (3-1-2, 10-3-2). UW and MSU were knotted at 0-0 until senior Jeffrey Krass put in the game’s only goal in the 70th minute. Before the meeting, Wisconsin seniors Erol Goknur and Watson Vaughn Prather were honored for their four years of dedication and hard work on Senior Day.
Play through the first half was even. Michigan State had a scoring chance 18 minutes in, but Badger goalie Eric Hanson stopped Ryan McMahen’s shot. McMahen, a recent Big Ten offensive player of the week recipient, had two shots in the match.
30 minutes in Nick Van Sicklen’s breakaway chance was stopped by Spartan defender Nick DeGraw, who grabbed Van Sicklen from behind. DeGraw earned a yellow card for the foul but saved his team a one-goal deficit. Erol Goknur took the free kick for the Badgers from just outside the penalty box. His shot successfully cleared the wall of defenders but sailed over the goal.
With 20 seconds to go in the first half, Michigan State forward Craig Hearn had only the goalie to beat from the left side of the goal but put his shot wide right, and the half ended with the score 0-0.
Minutes before MSU’s goal, UW had a scoring chance. Phil Doeh put a head on Hamid Afsari’s cross, and Jed Hohlbein almost got to the ball before the Spartan goalie — just yards away from the goal. Soon after, MSU put together the run that was the turning point in the match.
Hanson came off his line to try and stop the MSU forward.
“I made the first save. I actually thought it was going to go wide of the post. It had some legs on it … I don’t really know,” Hanson said. “I turned around and it was in the goal, I have no idea what happened.”
It appeared as though Alec Neal was going to be able to clear the ball off the goal line, but a Spartan was able to get a foot on it and put it in.
UW ended the game with an intense offensive attack but was unable to put one in the back of the net.
Head coach Jeff Rohrman thought his team’s play was mediocre at best.
“I would say we were a little bit erratic,” Rohrman said. “I thought sometimes we were doing okay; other times we were a little bit off. I don’t think we had enough players playing to the levels they are capable of today … it wasn’t until late when we pushed some numbers forward that we generated a whole lot of dangerous chances.”
Goknur, a senior tri-captain, thought the team had the potential to win in his last match at McClimon Soccer Complex.
“It’s sad it’s the last game at McClimon, but I’m disappointed we didn’t get the win,” he said. “[The] last few years have been great for me, especially Jeff Rohrman coming on; he’s helped me a lot. This is definitely waking us up. We’re very capable of beating these types of teams. These teams are just very average. We should have come out with a victory today, and we should come out with victories with all these kinds of teams…”
Prather, Wisconsin’s other senior honoree, approached the match the same as he would have any other.
“It’s just another day you know, it’s another game so it wasn’t like any different approach on the game,” he said. “I was hoping to come out with a win my last game at the McClimon, but it was sort of hard luck on the goalie. I don’t know really how [MSU’s goal] got in there. I was proud of my team today. We played very well — came out hard. We didn’t create enough chances. That’s sort of the story of our season: not getting enough goals. Disappointing loss, but you move. Big Ten’s coming up, few games left so we’ll try to go out hard, make some noise.”
Hanson, the team’s only non-senior captain, thought the match was uncharacteristic of the level of soccer the team can play.
“I don’t think we played as well as we could have played,” Hanson said. “We could have played better; I mean it’s our last game [at McClimon] for the season. If we don’t come to play I don’t really know what’s going on.”
