Physicality would be the appropriate word to sum up the final match of the adidas/IU Credit Union Classic.
Was it senior defender Derek Creviston’s chipped tooth? Was it the 23 combined fouls? Was it the amount of challenges that went uncalled? Well, it was a mix of all of that and more.
The No. 15 Stanford Cardinal have yet to win a game in 2016 as the defending national champions, and the trend continued Sunday at Bill Armstrong Stadium as the No. 5 Indiana Hoosiers battled a man down for nearly 70 minutes to settle for a 0-0 draw.
“We’ve had games where it was a battle, and tonight was definitely a battle,” IU senior midfielder Tanner Thompson said. “We fought through and got the result, so it’s a positive takeaway.”
That’s right — the Hoosiers had to play one of the most physical matches of the season with just 10 men. IU senior defender Grant Lillard was first cautioned by the referee with a yellow card in the 17th minute and then was sent off in the 43rd minute following a second yellow.
IU Coach Todd Yeagley was visibly upset on the sideline with some of the other happenings in the game, but said losing Lillard was big.
“Grant is a big loss,” Yeagley said. “The message was just stay focused and disciplined because it’s easy to get forward and lose sight that we’re playing a man down. We had to pick and choose when to go forward, and I would have loved to see it a few more times, but it wasn’t to be.”
Stanford had the chances in this match for most of the night and put the IU defense in some iffy situations. Yeagley had his work cut out for him at halftime after losing Lillard, and Creviston was a big part of that, being a central defender.
“It wasn’t the soccer we wanted to play, but you’re going to get games like that,” Creviston said with a chipped front tooth. “We were just proud we battled through and got a result.”
Multiple times throughout the night, senior goalkeeper Colin Webb had to come up with big saves to keep the Hoosiers alive. IU had a few chances here and there, but in the second half, the Cardinal mostly dominated the possession, being a man up.
The match ended with some staggering stats, as the Cardinal out-shot the Hoosiers just 6-5 but committed 18 fouls to the Hoosiers’ five. At the end of the first half, IU had committed just two fouls to Stanford’s 10, but those two fouls were Lillard’s yellow cards, and that got Yeagley perturbed during the halftime interview.
“We’re trying to play soccer today, but I don’t know if Stanford wanted to come play,” Yeagley said on the Big Ten Network broadcast at halftime.
The Hoosiers finished the adidas/IU Credit Union Classic 1-0-1, as they had to come up with a resilient 2-1 win Friday night against Cal before Sunday’s draw against Stanford. Yeagley likes where the team stands after the weekend.
“The four games that we opened up with — to still have three wins and a draw says a lot about where we are,” Yeagley said. “We’re still building and getting better. I do feel our team will look different in two, three weeks or a month as we get better. We’re not close to the finished product, yet a lot of things I saw this weekend were positive.”
IU feels good about where they stand heading into the Big Ten slate and will welcome No. 7 Maryland on Friday. They will be without their big defender in Lillard, but Creviston said they have a good mindset going in.
“I think we have a good mindset right now,” Creviston said. “We’re just going to take what we can from this game and learn from it and we have a big Friday, and I think we’ll be ready.”
