It’s been 31 games and almost two years since the Northwestern men’s soccer team has beaten an opponent.

But that doesn’t mean much to head coach Tim Lenahan.

“I’m guaranteeing a win,” he said. “We’re winning (today). We’re ending the streak.”

The bold prediction came just minutes after the Wildcats lost their 10th match of the season, a 3-0 defeat to Marquette.

NU (0-10-2, 0-5 Big Ten) hasn’t won a match since the first round of the Big Ten tournament in 1999, going 0-17-1 last season. The Cats’ lone tie was against Division II Lewis.

The Cats started this season in promising fashion, tying two of their first four opponents. But since then they have lost eight straight matches.

But, according to Lenahan, today’s the day.

So why is the losing streak going to end now? Why against Western Michigan?

“We have to just draw the line and say, ‘This is it, this is the week,'” Lenahan said. “It’s a team that’s relatively at the same level as us, maybe for the first time this year, other than Wisconsin-Green Bay.”

Actually, NU faces a Western Michigan team on a two-game winning streak today in Kalamazoo, Mich.

The Broncos (4-7) are also 4-1 against NU all-time and have scored 22 goals this year as opposed to the Cats’ six.

But Lenahan said this game has been circled on his calendar for a few weeks.

“This is a team that we’ve really got to go after,” he said. “If not, I don’t know what’s going to happen the rest of the year.”

NU has faced tough opponents this season, including five Top 25 teams — No. 6 Indiana, No. 16 Wisconsin-Milwaukee, No. 20 Ohio State and No. 24 Illinois-Chicago. Penn State was also ranked when it faced NU.

The tough schedule has made the road to victory even harder for the Cats.

Since the guaranteed win won’t come from an overnight change in talent level, something Lenahan says NU has less of than every one of its opponents, it will have to come from elsewhere.

Maybe the victory will come from Lenahan’s changed approach toward his players.

“I’m going to back off a little bit,” he said. “I’m going to kind of put it on their shoulders. The coaches and I have been bearing the emotional responsibility the whole year.”

And the team seems to be responding to the challenge.

“That’s the game we can win,” freshman Matt Pyzyk said. “We have to put it on the line. It’s a team that we can beat. We need to come out with a victory.”

If the Cats do win today, it would be Pyzyk’s first collegiate victory — as well as the first for 14 of his teammates.

One of the biggest obstacles for NU is the team’s lack of leadership, according to both the players and Lenahan, and Pyzyk pointed out the lack of on-field leadership as a problem for the Cats — especially in tense, game-on-the-line situations.

“Someone needs to step up and decide they’re going to make the play to win the game,” Pyzyk said.

Lenahan blames the absence of leadership on the fact that the Cats are in a “true system” for the first time in their college careers.

“Leadership is developed over the course of four years,” he said. “The sense of pride in the program, that’s not evident. That needs to be taught and developed over the course of time.”

And time is something the Cats don’t have — at least not between their loss to Marquette Wednesday and their supposedly guaranteed win at Western Michigan today.

But still, Lenahan seems to have all the confidence in the world. According to him, the Broncos have no chance today.

“Put it in the books,” Lenahan said. “We’re winning.”