As a .500 team, the UW Badgers have come to a turning point in the 2003 season that will either elevate them into the postseason or send them toward a discouraging finish at this year’s Big Ten tournament.
UW (8-8,1-3) is desperately looking for a win to keep its NCAA Tournament hopes alive, and they will get that opportunity this Wednesday night when they host the Blue Demons of DePaul (7-7-0, 3-2-0).
“It’s a team we haven’t played in a number of years, so it’s not like we have anything to go on from last year or the year before that,” UW head coach Jeff Rohrman said. “They’re going to be a solid team; they’re coming off a three-game winning streak. They just beat Charlotte, who’s a good team. Conference USA is a very good conference. They’re much improved from where they were a couple years ago.”
This week C-USA has three teams in the NSCAA/Adidas national top 25 rankings: No. 5 St. Louis, No. 21 Cincinnati and No. 23 UAB. C-USA’s three top 25 teams are three more than the Big Ten has. However, the Big Ten has three teams in the Great Lakes Regional ranking: No. 4 Michigan, No. 6 Indiana and No. 8 Michigan State.
Both UW and DePaul have played UWGB and Marquette, but getting any useful analysis out of the results could prove to be difficult. DePaul beat Green Bay 2-0, while Green Bay beat UW 1-0. Marquette put a 4-0 stomping on DePaul, while UW put the Golden Eagles away 2-1.
The results show that no team or match can be overlooked.
“You can’t use [non-conference games] as a tune up because then, in some ways, your mindset might be that you’re overlooking it,” Rohrman said. “Each game has its own important value. We can’t put more emphasis on one … than the other because if we do, then we’re playing a little bit of a dangerous game, so we have to take each game as though it’s a conference game and then play it with the same importance and value as [we would] any other game.”
“I think at this point of the season, we need to take every game as serious as we can, especially being eight and eight,” UW junior Nick Van Sicklen said. “I think these next four games, we have to take care of them if we want a shot at getting an automatic bid into the NCAA tournament.”
DePaul has won six of its last seven matches and, after posting a pair of shutouts against Wisconsin-Green Bay and Charlotte last week, DePaul goalkeeper Michael Timlin was named Conference USA’s Defensive Player of the Week. He is the third Blue Demon to earn the league’s weekly honor this season, joining senior Jeff Klitzke and junior Luke Rojo.
Rojo is DePaul’s leading scorer, with four goals and three assists. He led the team in scoring last year as well, with seven goals and four assists. He also earned third-team All-Conference USA recognition. The previous year he was named to the All-Conference USA freshman team.
Jeff Klitzke played for UW in 2000 but then decided to transfer to DePaul. He has started seven games in goal this season for the Blue Demons, posting four shutouts. Last year he also moved out of the goal to play defender.
Both Rohrman and Van Sicklen are ready to put Sunday’s loss to Michigan behind them and build on what the team did well.
“We’re putting the Michigan game behind us … I really believe if we take some of the stuff from Michigan, probably two-thirds of that, and we start doing those sorts of things on Wednesday we’re going to reward ourselves,” Rohrman said.
“I think [Sunday] there were some unfortunate goals against us; two pk’s, one deflection goal,” Van Sicklen added. “I think our attack in the second half actually came alive, so if we can carry that over to the game we’ll be in the right place to take a ‘w’ out of there.”
Finishing scoring opportunities against a pumped up DePaul team will be the key for the Badgers.
“I feel good coming into it. We’re healthy and the guys are ready to get going … we’re expecting [DePaul] to come out with good team spirit … we just got to be sure we play our game and take care of what we can control and then finish off our chances.”
