No sports team is a one-man show, but last year’s men’s soccer team came close.
Then-freshman Gerardo Alvarez racked up more than one-third of Northwestern’s points on his way to becoming Co-Big Ten Freshman of the Year. He finished with 25 points.
The next person on the NU scoring list had only eight.
“Teams will be ready for him this year,” coach Tim Lenahan said at the beginning of this season. “With all the attackers we have in our lineup, we will need to show some balance so we can take pressure off of Gerardo.”
And the Wildcats have done just that.
This season, the NU offense is the most potent and one of the most balanced in the Big Ten. Ranked 22nd in the nation, the NU attack leads the Big Ten in scoring and is the only team in the conference with five double-digit point-getters.
Alvarez still leads the team in scoring, with 29 points, but 13 other players have put up points for the Cats.
NU’s dynamic offense will crash head-on into Wisconsin’s daunting duo of goal scorers when the Cats travel to Madison, Wisc. on Sunday.
Wisconsin senior Nick Van Sicklen is this week’s Big Ten Offensive Player of the Week, and with 32 points, he recently edged out Alvarez for the lead in Big Ten scoring.
Van Sicklen is complemented by fellow senior Jeb Hohlbein, who netted his second hat trick of the season Wednesday against Marquette. The pair of seniors combines for more than half of Wisconsin’s scoring and 85 percent of its goals.
The Badgers have 13 players who have scored points, but they only have three with more than one goal.
The Cats have seven, and that should give NU an advantage in Sunday’s game, midfielder Kevin Earnest said.
“I think it makes it a lot easier to prepare for two guys as opposed to preparing for an entire team,” Earnest said.
Earnest and forward Brad North each have tripled their production from last season, and defenders Brad Napper and Jaro Pylypczak have roughly doubled their outputs. Freshman David Roth is fifth in team scoring.
“We have a lot of guys that are very talented in a lot of different ways,” Earnest said. “We have guys who have speed and guys who are crafty players. The diversity of our attack works really well.”
And that scoring diversity has helped the Cats gain offensive success this season, Lenahan said.
“We play team soccer, and everyone takes the responsibility that it’s everyone’s job to score,” Lenahan said. “Gerardo is the central point of our attack, and a lot of people are going to focus on him. That being said, if other players can step up, that makes us a dangerous team.”
Reach Courtney McCarty at [email protected].
NU (11-4-2, 2-2-1 Big Ten) vs. Wisconsin (9-8-0, 2-3-0)
When: 1 p.m. Sunday
Where: Madison, Wis.
