Wednesday night’s men’s soccer game at McClimon Soccer Complex featured seven goals, treacherous winds, a trilling overtime finish and an all too familiar result for the Badgers, as they lost to UW-Green Bay 4-3 in OT.
Wisconsin came out with a new look on offense, which pushed senior captain Aaron Nichols to forward to play alongside freshman striker Chris Prince
The new 4-4-2 formation helped UW reach its highest scoring output of the season, with three goals, and gave Prince some much needed assistance up front. Nichols’ presence on the offensive end allowed Prince to contribute two stunning goals to keep Wisconsin in the game late.
“Well, usually we just played one up top, and that was me, and usually, I just hold the ball,” Prince said. “Getting Aaron up there, he’s looking to run off me and has a lot more speed, so it adds a lot more speed to the attack.”
Prince said the new formation was one factor that contributed to UW’s season-high three goals in the game because adding another player to the offensive attack allowed for more scoring opportunities, and as a result, more goals on the scoreboard.
Although the two goals look good on Prince’s stat line, the end result of the game is all that really counts for Prince, who expressed an expected sense of frustration form the loss.
“We played a good game. It’s probably one of the best games we’ve played this year. I don’t know, it just seemed we can’t come away with a win no matter what we do. I think playing our new formation is good. We got a lot form the game, so [we] hope to get better.”
Head coach John Trask admitted some growing pains would accompany the new formation, but liked the different look from the offensive end. Trask noted forward Bryan Gerster as a key contributor for the game.
While Trask realizes the toll it takes on Prince to play as the team’s only forward, he also acknowledged the toll it takes on the midfield and backs to man down.
The key decision on Trask’s plate is whether to stick with the new formation and allow a lot of goals as long as the team is scoring a lot of goals, or to return to a defense-oriented formation where the team was losing games 1-0.
Despite the unfortunate loss for Wisconsin, Trask saw a lot of good things from the game that were less apparent in previous games.
“I was proud of the guys tonight,” Trask said. “We’ve had a couple of performances that they know I wasn’t proud of, and tonight, I was proud of the effort given. I thought they battled for each other; I thought they battled for the university.”
In addition to the new formation, freshman goalkeeper Max Jentsch played his first game for the Badgers as a full-time starter.
Jentsch allowed four goals, but recorded nine saves to help weather the Green Bay Phoenix’s 15 shot offensive storm led by All-American midfielder JC Banks and fellow midfielder Dan Krueger, who scored two goals on the night.
“As a whole, we played a lot better than we had in the past, I thought,” Jentsch said. “We actually scored some goals; it was nice. Unfortunately, we allowed more goals than we scored, but everything was better this game.”
Jentsch said all of the goalkeepers are in a competition for who will in goal the next game.
Trask said Jentsch made some very good saves and is doing some great things on the field while making a few mistakes as well, which is to be expected of a freshman.
However, Trask did not confirm Jentsch would be the team’s goalkeeper moving forward. Instead, he said the coaching staff would talk about the options at goalkeeper the next couple of days.