It won’t be the first time the Northwestern men’s soccer team has been the underdog this season.
As coach Tim Lenahan says, the Wildcats have been the underdog in every match they’ve played so far.
NU (0-8-2, 0-4 Big Ten) has already faced three Top 25 teams this season – No. 17 Penn State, No. 19 Wisconsin-Milwaukee and No. 22 Ohio State.
But none of those teams brings with it the pedigree of No. 6 Indiana (7-2, 3-0), which has won eight Big Ten titles since 1991.
“If you can’t get ready to play Indiana, there’s something wrong with you,” Lenahan said. “You have to be on your toes at all times. There’s no time to take plays off or be sloppy.
“We need to keep the game close and see if we can make a play.”
Mistakes have been a big problem for the Cats this season, costing them games.
“There are two reasons for the problem,” senior captain Dan Doman said. “One is just bad luck, and the second is the lack of leadership.”
Doman said the team needs someone with experience to take control during matches.
Unfortunately, experience is the one thing the Cats don’t have, with 11 freshmen on their 22-man roster.
In terms of Sunday’s match against Indiana, Doman said there are two ways for the Cats to look at the game.
“The easy way is saying that we’re going to lose again and quit before we go out,” Doman said. “The hard way is to say there are going to be a lot of people (there) and that it is a golden opportunity to showcase our skills.”
Doman said if the team can get a result – a win or a tie – or can simply play impressively, it will start gaining some respect.
But the Cats have never even recorded a tie against the Hoosiers.
NU has lost all 17 matches it has played against Indiana and has been outscored 87-6.
Lenahan called Indiana the most successful program in the history of college soccer. Under current coach Jerry Yeagley, the Hoosiers are 501-92-37 in 29 seasons.
Yeagley is second in all-time career coaching victories to San Francisco’s Stephen Negoesco, who retired after the 2000 season with 544 wins. Indiana has reached the Final Four 14 times and has won the national championship five times.
The Hoosiers also boast two of the best players in the nation in junior Pat Noonan and freshman Mike Ambersley, who played high school soccer together in Missouri.
“(Noonan’s) a real special player,” Doman said. “He’s big, fast and talented. It’s going to be a challenge for our team to play against someone of that caliber.
“People are going to be aware of where he is on the field.”
Noonan – featured in this week’s Sports Illustrated’s Faces in the Crowd – leads the team in both goals and assists, with seven of each. The team has scored only five goals without Noonan’s involvement this year. Ambersley is second in goals with five.
The entire NU team has scored six goals in total.
One of those goals was scored in the Cats’ loss last Sunday to Western Illinois on a penalty kick by freshman Derek Schneider. The Leathernecks scored with three minutes left in the second half to break the 1-1 tie. NU went down early in that match with its fourth own-goal of the season.
The Cats have had a weeklong layoff since that loss to Western Illinois. The Hoosiers, on the other hand, travel to Wisconsin today for a match with the Badgers before coming to Evanston.
But even with all of that rest, does NU have a chance to beat Indiana this weekend?
“You never know,” Lenahan said. “It’s soccer. If it were football or basketball, we’d have no shot. But it’s soccer.”
