Aaron

Finally number 2! Gutman heads in a perfectly placed corner in front of goal!

Check that apparently announcers made a mistake. He's been cleared to play tonight for first time but has yet to take the field. However, that's big news that he's healthy again.

Big news! Rennicks makes his season debut! Apparently only cleared for about 10 min a game right now per announcers but is working his way back on fitness.

Not a great first half from us at all. Not sure if missing Dorsey and Gutjhar has had an affect but generally we are putting our d in a bad position at times (although they have been up to the task to clear the danger) and are not dominating quite as crisply with possession as we should be. This is definitely a better Evansville team than in past years and certainly a stronger opponent than Rutgers or Santa Clara but we did not play anywhere near our best soccer in first half. Hopefully we adjust and can assert ourselves much better in 2nd half.

Wow. We looked really sluggish in first five minutes than all of the sudden Toye found a ball just outside the box and buried a strike on our first real chance of night. Again exhibit A that Toye replacing Hyacenth as primary striker has been our biggest key to being a complete team finally this year.

So Panchot and Glass for Dorsey and Gutjahr for now. Glad we are so deep given that we are missing 3 starters (Kleyn still out on d with injury) and almost no drop off. I assume this will be our lineup next couple games and than Dorsey will slide back into his normal spot and when Kleyn returns Buckmaster can take one of the midfield spots back. If Gutjahr comes back (I have no idea the severity but sounds like he got at least a decent injury) I put Buckmaster as a back up as Cory Thomas has been beyond excellent as a starter. Also if Rennicks ever plays curious where they put him. He's suppose to be as good as Dorsey but given depth may play off bench until next year.

I'm very happy for Dorsey and IU is fortunate the two games he will miss are against two mediocre teams and we will have him back for our tougher stretch against UK, OSU and Butler who are all in top 25. With that said it does make me wonder if Dorsey is a one and done (yes that does exist in soccer but less often ala Tommy Thompson) as I suspected could be possible since the beginning. On a different note attendance is up and even Kent Sterling has mentioned our team on his show a couple times in the last few weeks here in Indy. Hopefully this team continues to be what we think they are and get back to the College Cup. Tournament results can be random but as I have said multiple times this definitely looks like the best IU team in at least 10 years and maybe more.

First game this year I wasn't able to see so cannot provide my normal analysis as I know nothing and saw nothing. With that said glad to see we continue to score and defend against opponents we should. We definitely appear to be a complete team for the first time in at least a decade. The only bummer I read is that we may have lost Jeremiah Gutjahr for a while to an injury. That hurts but we are so deep that we should have the depth to cover that with Buckmaster sliding back to midfield and Kleyn taking his spot on D when he returns very soon plus we have guys sitting on the bench who would start for most teams.

We did it! This leaves no doubt in my mind we have our best team since around 2005 with Jerry Yeagley and Mike Freitag (I know we won it in 2012 but that was not a truly elite team and so far I think this one is). D just doesn't allow chances to anyone and we finally score adequately to match it and are extremely deep. Don't know if we win it all but barring some slip we should have top 4 seed and home field all the way to college cup. We definitely are legitimately looking like the number 1 team we are ranked and I am very excited to see what this season continues to bring.

This is great college soccer and this Notre Dame team the best we've faced this year. We are doing our best to score but their D turning us away at every attempt. We are being smart with the ball getting best shot available but they are more than up to task. After a slow first few minutes we have asserted ourselves well and just need to find the net which won't be easy. Looks from TV like by far best crowd of year at around 4,000-5,0000 (just a guess based on the one side I can see) and very glad to see fans turned out for this great match! Update: attendance was 4,654 which is 11th largest in history per IU twitter. It's the largest non opening weekend crowd I can recall (although my memory is foggy on that). Great job by the fans who were treated to an awesome match. I was just thinking attendance may be down a bit this year but tonight banished that thought and if we keep playing like this people will continue to show up.

Wow! What a complete tire fire Rutgers is just like in every sport. Remind me why the Big Ten added them? They can't pass, they can't attack and they have absolutely no defense. It would of been 10-0 if not for the fact they have a decent goalie but the rest of their players are not good enough for this level of soccer. I see why they have the awful record they do. Probably the worst Big Ten team I have ever seen come into Armstrong Stadium and maybe worse than IUPUI, Evansville and some of the other bottom feeders that we play annually. Now with all that said we took care of business and put them to bed early like we should. Even against bad teams last year we had a hard time scoring so the fact we are putting up big numbers on anybody is a huge improvement. Certainly no complaints about this game and looking very much forward to seeing how we do against a great Notre Dame team and this to me still looks like the best IU team since at least 2012 when we won it all.

Never take anything for granted but yes Rutgers is awful (as they are in just about every sport). As long as we play our game we should win easily but must come ready to play and realize nothing is handed to you.

Team is definitely improving but still a bit to go. I also would assume it will get easier to recruit next year moving into the nice new stadium as well.

I don't want to be Mr. Negative but while I am hopefully this team will be better I have not been sold. They played a super easy schedule and even lost a game to one of the mediocre teams and were pushed by others. Despite the gaudy record they didn't receive a single top 25 vote in any polls which says a lot. I hope things go OK and we will learn a lot Saturday against a mediocre but improving Maryland team but given how hard the Big Ten is I won't be surprised if this team falls flat in Big Ten play.

They may not be perfect but they certainly can play D and score a bit better than last year. This is a Northwestern team we have not scored on hardly at all in past years given their pack it in style on defense where they play behind the ball. We played awful against Michigan but otherwise have actually looked really good (I have seen every game either at stadium or on TV save for the opener against Cal Poly) in all phases in every other game. Things could go south but right now this team looks pretty good to me. The schedule has been mediocre but you can only beat the teams in front of you and last year we could not score great on even the worst teams so that is progress. Still tough games left to prove our worth against ND, UK, OSU, Butler and MSU

Yes definitely

IU wins! This is not a good Northwestern team but the way they throw men back on d and how frustrated we have been in past with ties against them this is a positive. We were much more patient against them compared with the last few times and broke them down for the goals we needed after a bad performance against Michigan. Also defense looked much sharper than last game as Northwestern only had one dangerous chance late in the game but otherwise we controlled play. Need same performance against an equally bad Rutgers team (They are 1-5-1 allowing almost 3 goals a game and have scored more than once only against a bad Oral Roberts team) at home Friday as this is another must 3 point game.

Clearly these announcers don't know that college soccer allows unlimited subbing (except once you leave in first half you cannot return with same player till 2nd half) wondering if Northwestern has subs left. Got to prepare better and learn rule differences when calling game. Still 2-0 late with IU getting additional chances as Northwestern starts bringing men forward needing goals.

Finally a 2nd goal! Gutman sent one in that was deflected and saved but Thomas put in the rebound. Northwestern still throwing tons of men behind the ball on D prior to the goal but we have broke them down patiently unlike last year.

Well we got to halftime with the lead. The last few minutes I saw we did not play great but did manage to get a goal early which is hard given how Northwestern sits behind the ball and with 8-9 men back.

Feed working finally. Stadium as bad as I remember. Gorgeous view of lake but terrible facility.

Got you. I went there once when I happened to be in Chicago a couple years ago (have tons of family and friends there). Awful stadium. Pretty view of lake but facilities lack with just an old bleacher, porta potties instead of permanent restrooms and no real facilities of any kind on site. Don't know if anythings changed with how much they are upgrading facilities but that was my experience when I went

Are you there?

Saw that on that on the twitter feed. Without seeing what happened hard to say but it does continue to show Toye is our best option at forward.

Northwestern is always very amateurish with this kind of stuff. Their twitter feed should be alerting of the issue not ours. They're the home team. The problem is the feed is locked because either the Big Ten or Northwestern put the wrong time on the btn feed so it is not reading that the broadcast has started. This is something that should of been caught and fixed before the game. Just carelessness.