Following a recent resurgence in form, the UW men’s soccer team will look to build on its first winning streak of the season when it heads to East Lansing, Mich., to take on the Michigan State Spartans (6-7-1, 1-2 Big Ten) Sunday.
After earning a hard-fought 2-1 victory against Michigan Saturday and dominating a matchup Wednesday with in-state rival UW-Green Bay 3-0 in the pouring rain, the Badgers (5-6-3, 1-2 Big Ten) appear to have turned a corner this fall and now sit only one game short of .500 – a statistic that didn’t seem possible just a week ago after the team lost four of its last five games before Saturday’s victory.
Coming into the season, one of head coach John Trask’s main goals was to earn UW’s first NCAA Tournament appearance since 1995. While the door seemed to be closing on that dream, a midseason return to form may have come just in time for the Badgers to salvage their preseason goal.
“The RPI (rankings) just came out and it would be an uphill struggle to say we could make the NCAA Tournament without winning out or winning the Big Ten Conference Tournament,” Trask said.
“I think when you win ten games in the season prior and you’ve got a lot of retuning players, the assumption is the next step is obviously the NCAA Tournament. We need to just keep continuing to improve.”
Last year in a tightly contested battle between the Spartans and Badgers at the McClimon Complex, the Badgers came out with a memorable 1-0 win on their way to UW’s first 3-0 start to the Big Ten since their National Championship-winning season in 1995.
While UW started the 2012 Big Ten season winless in two attempts before finally clinching a victory on its third try, the Badgers still have three games remaining, and with three more wins they could still end up with the same 4-2 record that helped earn them a second place finish in the Big Ten regular season in 2011.
Still, to make that possibility a reality, Wisconsin will have to contain a Michigan State offense that has relied on a few key offensive players thus far in the season.
Three players – sophomore Adam Montague, senior Luke Norman and senior Domenic Barone – currently have 30 of the team’s 68 shots on goal and eight of their 14 goals this season. Despite this formidable combination of offensive threats, sophomore defender AJ Cochran said the game plan won’t change Sunday.
“When we go into games and we get scouting reports on their good players, every team is going to have their one, two or three good players,” Cochran said. “We definitely go into those games and want to limit their touches on the ball, but that is the same for any game.”
As if the fact their NCAA Tournament dream might just be hanging on by a thread was not enough motivation heading into Sunday’s game, the matchup will also be televised on the Big Ten Network, significantly increasing the average audience in front of which UW is accustomed to playing.
“Always in the beginning of the season, [we] look at the schedule and say, ‘All right which games are going to be on TV’ just because it’s sort of cool to be on TV,” junior forward Chris Prince said. “Especially it being a Big Ten game and being on TV, it will give a lot more motivation to the guys to work even harder so we show people watching the game what we are capable of.”
Along with Wisconsin’s midseason revival, Chris Prince has had his own resurgence of sorts in his last few games. After two goals early in the season, Prince went through a scoring drought lasting 10 games before finally ending his scoreless streak Saturday with his third goal of the season.
Prince said he hopes he won’t have to wait quite as long for his fourth goal as he did for his third.
“I’ve been searching for a goal for quite a while,” Prince said. “I’m playing kind of a new position, attacking [midfielder] this year, so I kind of have a different role, but it does a lot for my confidence. I will definitely be looking for [goals] more often now.”
Another beneficial aspect of playing in a televised game are the potential benefits a good showing on national television could have on the recruiting process for the Badgers. As an unranked team, the Badgers don’t receive as much attention as some of the top programs in the country, so any attention is good attention for the future of Trask’s program.
“A lot of households get the Big Ten Network,” Trask said. “There will be plenty kids across the Midwest and the country tuning in to watch Big Ten soccer. They will get a chance to see what we are all about, the style of play, the discipline, the strength, the demeanor of our team.
“It’s always a good advertisement for us at Wisconsin.”
