The Wisconsin men’s soccer team (9-9-0 overall, 2-4-0 in Big Ten) begins postseason play today with an 8 a.m. match against Michigan State to kick off the 2004 Big Ten tournament from Varsity Field in Ann Arbor, Mich.
The Badgers enter the tournament needing to win three contests to capture the conference title and advance to the NCAA tournament, which begins Nov. 19. With a .500 record, the Badgers will likely need to secure the tournament champion’s automatic bid to extend their season.
“At this stage, I think with where we are we’re probably going to have to win all three,” head coach Jeff Rohrman said. “You know, obviously when you’re 9-9 you always look back at those three or four that maybe got away, and certainly there were a few in September.”
Despite dropping its final match of the season to Northwestern, Wisconsin enters the tournament playing arguably its best soccer of the season, going 6-3-0 in its last nine matches. The Badgers can also take solace in the fact that they bested Michigan State by a score of 2-1 just two Sundays ago.
“Well, they’re certainly going to be fired up having just lost that game at home to us,” Rohrman said. “I like how we match up with Michigan State. I think they have some trouble with a few of our guys in terms of our speed and athleticism, and hopefully we can take advantage of that this weekend.”
In the two teams’ last matchup, the Spartans struggled mightily to contain Big Ten scoring leader Nick Van Sicklen, who tallied both Wisconsin goals in the Badger victory.
Michigan State does possess three talented scorers in Jordan Gruber (27 points), John Minagawa-Webster (27 points) and Ryan McMahen (18 points). The young Badger defense will need to mark the dangerous trio well if Wisconsin is to have success.
“It’s a bit of a luxury to have three guys, because you can’t really hone in on one of them, or even two of them,” Rohrman said. “So, they can beat you a couple different ways. But I thought we did a good job last time out in terms of shutting them down and with the exception of maybe 20, 25 minutes into the second half I thought we played a pretty good game. But again, they’re three guys we’re going to have to keep our eye on most of the time.”
If Wisconsin defeats Michigan State, it will earn a rematch with defending national champion Indiana, who defeated the Badgers 1-0 in the second round of last season’s conference tournament.
“Unfortunately, the biggest drawback to losing to Northwestern was the fact that we have to play a rested Indiana team if we get past Michigan State, which as we learned last year, wasn’t an easy task,” Rohrman said. “But I thought we fought hard last year. I just want to get past Michigan State and then we’ll deal with that.”
Other first-round matches feature surprise second-seed Ohio State taking on the lowest-seeded host squad Michigan, and third-seeded Northwestern facing Penn State, who finished conference play with a disappointing 1-3-2 record.
“Looking at it early on, I don’t think anybody would’ve picked Michigan and Penn State to be sixth and seventh in this conference, but it just shows how far the conference has come,” Rohrman said. “On any given year, things can change pretty quickly. I give Ohio State a lot of credit and certainly Northwestern with the types of seasons they’ve had this year, especially in the conference.”
Though the Badgers face the daunting task of having to run the table to extend their season, Rohrman says his team has to keep things simple.
“We just have to … take one at a time, and certainly Michigan State is somebody we should feel good about,” Rohrman said.
