Coming off two tough losses last week, Northwestern coach Tim Lenahan said his team needed results in the Adidas/Baymont Inn Invitational at Northern Illinois.
After last weekend, the Wildcats had found what they were looking for.
Led by junior Brad North’s two goals, the Cats responded by going undefeated in DeKalb, Ill. NU (4-2-0) picked up a 1-0 win Friday against Northern Illinois (3-2-1) and a 2-1 win Sunday against Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis (2-4-1).
“This early in the season, we are still trying to find ourselves,” Lenahan said. “But we need to take care of business along the way, and we did this weekend.”
Before the games, Lenahan said the Cats needed to get back to playing “Northwestern soccer,” which he said starts with a solid defense.
The key to the victories was a strong back half led by seniors Jaro Pylypczak and Adam Sirois, who were named to the All-Tournament team.
“We really defended well,” Lenahan said. “Jaro’s play was very good for us. He controlled the tempo. It was important that he did well.”
Offensively, NU had some trouble finding the back of the net but managed to slip in some timely scores.
In Friday’s game against Northern Illinois, North broke a scoreless tie in the 60th minute with the game-winning goal off of a pass from sophomore David Roth.
Freshman goalkeeper Misha Rosenthal kept the Huskies off the scoreboard the rest of the way, recording his second shutout of the season.
On Sunday, NU had four shots on goal and six corner kicks in the first half but failed to put a goal on the board until early in the second half.
Again it was North, who scored his fourth goal of the year and gave the Cats the lead in the 54th minute.
The Jaguars came back with a goal in the 86th minute to tie the game.
But just 36 seconds later, NU senior Brad Napper connected on a corner kick from Roth to give the Cats the win.
With two assists this weekend, Roth, who broke the school record for assists in a season in 2004, also was named to the All-Tournament team. The sophomore has four assists this season.
“Simply put, he’s got good touch,” Lenahan said. “He plays a good ball and makes it easy to make a play on it.”
Junior Gerardo Alvarez, who sat out the first two games of the season with knee injuries, was sidelined again in the second half of the IUPUI game with an arm injury.
Lenahan said he hopes Alvarez, the Cats’ leading scorer in 2004, will be ready to play in the Big Ten opener Sunday at Michigan.
Though he was satisfied with the Cats’ wins, Lenahan said his team needs to continue to improve as they head into conference play.
“We’re not at our peak yet, and no team is at this point in the year,” Lenahan said. “It took us 11 games last year to find our groove. So we just need to get better each game.”
Reach Scott Duncan at [email protected].
