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Class of '66 Old Fart

IUMS vs Evansville - 10/20/21 @ 7:00 on BTN+

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On paper, tonight's match should be over early.

Live Stats

A red-hot Indiana men's soccer team (9-3-1, 4-2-0 B1G) returns to Bill Armstrong Stadium Wednesday (Oct. 20) night to host non-conference opponent Evansville (1-10-1, 1-4-1 MVC) at 7 p.m. ET.
 
SETTING THE SCENE
• Indiana men's soccer is in its best stretch of the season so far, winning six of its last seven and recording four straight shutouts.
• Indiana is 5-1-1 against non-conference opponents this season.
• IU is coming off four straight wins, including back-to-back wins against Big Ten opponents. Last week, the Hoosiers beat Ohio State, 3-0, at home on Tuesday, before grabbing another three points against Penn State on the road on Sunday. Indiana faces Evansville Wednesday before another important conference matchup against Wisconsin on Sunday.
 
ABOUT THE PURPLE ACES
• Evansville is led by seventh-year head coach Marshall Ray. He owns a 31-71-15 record during his time with the Purple Aces.
• Evansville's lone win came in a 2-1 Missouri Valley Conference win over Bradley on October 9.
• Sophomore midfielder Pablo Guillen leads the Purple Aces in scoring, owning three of the team's nine goals so far this season. Redshirt junior Jakub Hall has contributed a team-high three assists.
• Redshirt junior goalkeeper Jacob Madden has appeared in goal in nine of 12 matches for Evansville and leads the team in goals allowed average (2.28) saves (45) and shutouts (1).
 
SERIES HISTORY
• Indiana has traditionally dominated the series between in-state opponents, holding a 31-4-3 record in the series history.
• IU has won 17 straight matches against the Purple Aces spanning back to 1996. The Hoosiers are also undefeated against Evansville in 21 consecutive matches, a streak that stretches back to the 1992 season.
• In their last five meetings, Indiana has outscored Evansville 19-1.

DOMINANT DEFENSE
• The Indiana defense has posted four consecutive clean sheets and seven total shutouts this season.
• The Hoosiers have not allowed a goal in 390 minutes of play.
• Indiana student-athletes have earned the last two Big Ten Defensive Player of the Week awards, as junior goalkeeper Roman Celentano (Oct. 19) and redshirt junior defender Daniel Munie (Oct. 12) have played key roles in IU's defensive dominance.
• Senior defender Nyk Sessock was featured on the Top Drawer Soccer Team of the Week Tuesday (Oct. 19) for his contributions to the shutout streak as well as his cross that forced the own goal in Indiana's 1-0 win over Penn State on Sunday (Oct. 17).

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Evansville is not good at anything. They don't score hardly as mentioned above and give up well over two goals a game. This better be over early and bench emptied in second half like against Trine.

After tonight it gets more interesting with opportunities for huge wins. First we need to take care of Wisconsin who is the most bi-polar team in Big Ten. They started the year horrific, with a loss to Green Bay who has beaten no other team this season besides the Badgers. They then played pretty well and looked like they would be contender in the Big Ten. However, last two games they have reverted to early season form and got dominated last night by a Northwestern team who is the worst in the Big Ten. In other words looks like hopefully we are catching Wiscy at right time. Then it's VCU and Maryland who are legit and probably two of the five hardest games we have this year (along with PSU, Akron and Notre Dame). However, with both teams having RPI's in the  20's this is a huge opportunity to move up our seeding in NCAA Tournament (we don't lose to Evansville, we are making the NCAA's even if we lose last four with our resume).

Right now we have an RPI of 18 and are a fringe seeded team which includes a bye and a second round home game. I would like to get that closer to 10 which guarantees that bye and moves us closer to second round home game as well. We are almost always seeded higher than our RPI, due to our history and schedule, so if we can get just get the RPI to somewhere between 10-15 we should get two home games and a top 8 seed (top 20 should get us seeded for one home game and bye). I don't see any way we can get a top 4 seed and home games all the way to college cup though but at least an upset is possible then and maybe you can draw ND or UK as the top 4 team so it is a short drive for Elite 8 if bracket plays to from. They do try to seed regionally.    

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Worst first half we have played this year given the competition. Glad we got the goal on a same set piece play at the top of the box by Bezerra which we have run many times for a score to perfection. 

Outside of that though we were horrific given who we were playing. First off our final pass was about as bad as I have seen this year and Sarver blew an easy goal late in the half on a long ball where he had the Evansville D beat and lost possession to the goalie with a touch that was to hard. He is so good in space on those long balls where he can out run everyone but he needs to develop his touch a little bit when finishing those. Butler has run that play for years to perfection with speedy forwards and Sarver needs to learn to finish those every time instead of half the time.

Also our D forced Celentano to make way to many saves against an anemic offense. 

Lucky we are playing Evansville because that half beats no one besides Trine. Very possible we get up and play better if it is a better team tonight, but can't play down to your competition and we have very much done that tonight.

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13 minutes ago, Hooserfan1901 said:

I doubt OSU will beat PSU, but MSU has a slim chance to beat Maryland. Since I have no idea how Wisconsin beat Maryland 

Agreed slim odds but they are at home.  Ties wouldn’t be the worst thing either.  Since a decent chance they tie against each other 

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That was not our best game but we got the job done.

All of you can sit here and talk about the Big Ten Title and it would be a nice bonus but I am watching NCAA seeding much more carefully. We have three straight conference titles, so if we finish second or third I am not going to be mad. 

What we don't have is a National Title in almost a decade so I am much more concerned with a good seed in the NCAA's. Just by playing Evansville we were penalized three spots in the RPI and down to 21. That will move up or down in next few days depending on other results, but we need wins over VCU and Maryland and avoid tripping against Wisconsin to get that RPI comfortably into top 15 and at very least get a seed and a bye. Note we often get seeded a little higher than our RPI and with all these road wins probably will again. I would feel better though if we could move it up 5-10 more spots. 

As for tonight, we did the bare minimum to take care of business. I am glad we are done with these horrible teams as we are not good enough attacking wise to dominate anyone, but have the talent to play with any team in country. As a result we are better off taking our chances with better teams instead of making everyone nervous against these bottom feeders.

Our defense has rounded into form finally, mostly due to Celentano being a top goalie again here late in season. We made him work a little harder than needed tonight but nothing to bad. That's now five straight shutouts. 

Onto a Wisconsin team that was horrible at beginning of year, really good in the middle and then very bad again last couple games. Probably our last three games are back to first to score wins scenario and we really need all of them to solidify our seeding in the NCAA Tournament. 

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On 10/20/2021 at 9:21 PM, Hooserfan1901 said:

I doubt OSU will beat PSU, but MSU has a slim chance to beat Maryland. Since I have no idea how Wisconsin beat Maryland 

Well somehow OSU is up 2-0.  We were both wrong lol. But good for the Hoosiers

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