Last year the UW men’s soccer opened Big Ten play with plenty of momentum and good play resulting in an 8-3-1 record. The Big Ten season however, got the best of them, finishing off 10-7-1 and 3-3 in conference play.

This season the team is 6-2, and this weekend the Badgers travel to Columbus, Ohio, to open their Big Ten season against the Buckeyes on Friday evening.

“Always with a Big Ten game there is a little bit more pep in the boys’ step,” first-year Badger coach Jeff Rohrman said.

“But are we preparing for this game any differently than any other game? The answer is no. The guys have been working hard this whole season, and I think we will be prepared to play well. We don’t place importance of one game over another. For us this is just another game. We take them as they come.”

The Buckeyes, now 4-3, are looking to avenge their loss last year to the Badgers. It appears that this year they will prove to be a challenge.

The emergence of the sophomore and freshmen classes has given the Badgers a new look both offensively and defensively. The defense led by sophomores Joe Anderson, Eric Hansen and Ryan Nord have held opposing teams to only five goals so far while notching five shutouts.

The offense lead by freshman Phil Doeh, who leads the team in goals with four, sophomore Nick Van Sicklen, the leader in points, and senior co-captain, Valentine Anozie, who has returned after a season ending injury last year, have given the team new fire power. After losing both starting forwards to graduation last year, these three have totaled nine goals thus far.

“We’ve been doing pretty well with the lineup that we have right now,” Rohrman said.

“The defense has been playing so well, the numbers speak for themselves. We have been frustrating the opposition, and with the exception of a few break downs, our defensive has been dominant.”

“On offense, we have moved Van Sicklen back to a more midfield role,” Rohrman said.

“He is just so good at chasing down loose balls and running at defenders and making them stop him. We’ve also put Phil Doeh in the rotation with Valetine, so with those three we have three guys who are extremely explosive and dangerous”.

The emergence of the offense and defense comes as a relative surprise given the amount of personnel lost in key positions from last year to this year, but not to be overlooked is the role of the midfield in the maturity of these facets in the game.

In particular, the play of juniors Watson Vaughn Prather, Erol Goknur, and David Martinez, give consistently strong performances in all aspects: scoring goals, winning balls in the midfield, and stopping many of the opponents counterattacks before they can materialize.

“We have so many natural leaders on this team that if these players do start going poorly for us, somebody will inevitably step up their play and with it the team’s play as well,” Rohrman said.

This quality in a team and its players should prevent successive let-downs if a first let-down occurs — namely, a loss to the Buckeyes at the Big Ten opener Friday night. It is imperative because only two days later the Badgers will continue their road trip in Cincinnati playing against Atlantic-10 team, Xavier University, Sunday afternoon.

“We have had some experience playing Friday to Sunday games,” Rohrman said.

“When both games are away it makes things a little more difficult to either regroup or to maintain a consistent high level of play. But we have done well this season in these situations so far and I think this weekend will be no different.”

A similar road trip last year resulted in two losses for the Badgers and reversed the momentum and good fortune that the team had accumulated previously.

“We don’t put too much pressure on ourselves, and we don’t place more importance on one weekend of play,” Rohrman said.

“If we do that and things don’t go well then where do we go from there? Placing too much importance on one game over another will inevitably lead to let downs.”

Rohrman wants to minimize the importance of this weekend, a shrewd coaching tactic; it could be a precursor for the rest of the season.

The Badgers need to win this weekend to keep their momentum flowing and to prove that this team is different from last year’s.

It will be a tough test for the Badgers, but with players in new roles led by a new coach, this year seems destined to be one of change.