The Wisconsin men's soccer team (4-9-0, 0-3-0) lost a tough second-half battle Friday night at the hands of two-time defending national champion Indiana (8-1-3, 2-1-1) 5-2. Despite heading into the break with the score tied 2-2, the Badgers could not shut down the No. 8 Hoosier arsenal in the second half.

"[Indiana is] a good team," Wisconsin head coach Jeff Rohrman said. "They're obviously ranked where they are because of their performances and the team that they are. I'm happy that we could show them that we could compete for 45 minutes, but I'm also a little bit disappointed that we couldn't compete for the whole 90 minutes."

Indiana opened the scoring with a questionable penalty call in the 15th minute. After a low cross was sent in from the right flank, junior striker Jacob Peterson was slightly taken down just outside of the six-yard box, resulting in a Hoosier penalty kick.

Freshman forward Lee Nguyen stepped up and secured the lead for Indiana with a clinical finish into the lower left corner.

Six minutes later the Badgers responded with a penalty kick of their own following some clever footwork on the right channel by redshirt freshman Victor Diaz.

Following several stepovers, the Spaniard lofted the ball onto the foot of sophomore Sho Fujita, who was viciously tripped up eight yards from goal. Diaz sent Indiana keeper Chris Munroe the wrong way and slotted home the equalizer from the spot.

It didn't take the Hoosiers long to regain the lead, however, as senior midfielder Brian Plotkin answered just four minutes later with a swerving 30-yard blast into the right side of the net with his left foot. The goal marked Plotkin's fifth of the season.

Wisconsin's bench provided a huge spark for the Badgers going into halftime when substitute Nick Caronna whipped in a cross onto the head of fellow substitute Matthew Jelacic. Jelacic then flicked the ball right onto the path of a streaking Reid Johnson who was able to hammer the ball past Munroe into the lower left corner to tie the game in the 43rd minute.

After scoring only one goal in their past five matches, the Badger players knew the scoring had to come eventually, and they were all delighted to break the slump.

"It felt really good," Johnson said of his goal. "I've just come off of an injury, so it was just exciting to be out there and playing at full strength again. I knew we were going to score tonight because we've been struggling lately and everyone's been really busting it at practice — I think everybody knew we were going to score today."

Unfortunately for Wisconsin, the scoring surge ended at two and the Badger goal was the target of a Hoosier offensive assault throughout the entire second half.

In the 52nd minute, Indiana defender Greg Stevning sent a defense-splitting through pass to Jacob Peterson who needed only to cut past Wisconsin keeper Jake Settle for the game-winning goal. Six minutes later, Peterson scored his seventh of the season and second of the match making it 4-2.

Indiana's Jordan Chirico rounded out the scoring for the Hoosiers in the 64th minute of play.

Although Rohrman was thrilled with the return of goalscoring for the team, he was also frustrated with the team's defensive breakdown in the second half.

"I thought in the second half, for whatever reason, we just didn't put it together," Rohrman said. "We gave them too many soft goals tonight. I thought the last one that Chirico scored was a good goal, but aside from that, I thought they were goals that we gave up instead of making them earn them."

While the defeat marks the seventh-straight loss for the Badgers, Rohrman and his squad are not worrying about the past, but are instead preparing for their next match Wednesday with Marquette University.

"In college soccer, you can't dwell on one game or one setback," Rohrman said. "We've struggled a little bit finding the goal, and now tonight we got two, so we should feel good about that. I thought we created some good things going forward, so there are some positives to take from there and hopefully we can sure up some things on the defensive side and come out and play for 90 minutes on Wednesday."