Aiming for an upset

Jerry Yeagley uses a unique description when explaining the matchup between his defense and North Carolina's attack.\nYeagley's men's soccer team travels to North Carolina tomorrow to play the Tarheels in the quarterfinals of the NCAA tournament, and a key factor will be whether IU can shut down North Carolina's high-octane offense.\n"If we're matching up size-wise," Yeagley said, "we're sort of the gremlins in this one, the smurfs. The tough smurfs."\nThe Hoosiers indeed lose the size battle against the Tarheels, but IU's defense hasn't banked on its size this season. Its strength is its grit.\nSo the Hoosiers aren't too worried about North Carolina's 6-foot forward Caleb Norkus or 6-3 midfielder Michael Bucy. Or even 6-5 Matt Laycock, who scored two goals in the Tarheels' 3-2 first-round victory over William & Mary.\n"(Freshman David) Prall and I match up real well against them," sophomore marking back John Swann said. "We're both real aggressive. They've got some height on us, but we can get in on them, use our strength to push them off the ball and get them off balance when they go up for the head balls.\n"I don't think the size is really going to bother us in the back."\nWhat concerns Yeagley more than the size disadvantage is the finishing ability of North Carolina's primary attackers.\nNorkus has more goals (15) and assists (13) than any IU player. And he's second on the team in both categories.\nChris Carrieri joins Norkus up front to form one of the most productive forward tandems in the nation. Together, they've scored 40 total goals -- the same as IU's team total.\nSwann tackles the task of shutting down Carrieri, and Swann will mark Norkus. Senior center midfielder Justin Tauber will mark Bucy, who leads the team with 15 assists and is third in goals with nine.\nYeagley said he knows stopping those three players will determine whether IU advances to its third consecutive Final Four.\n"That's going to be it -- which team can defend the most," he said. "Because it's not outscoring your opponents at this point that wins it. In fact, four of our five championship games, we scored only one goal in regulation time.\n "That's going to be the bigger challenge -- stopping their attack."\n Yeagley said he knows the Tarheels will have a challenge of their own in stopping the Hoosiers' trio of Ryan Mack, Pat Noonan and Matt Fundenberger.\n With sophomore outside midfielder Marcus Chorvat out because of a red card against Washington last weekend, IU will have to rely more on its center midfielders and forwards.\n IU's go-to players have been up to the challenge thus far.\nMack, a junior midfielder, has tallied a goal and an assist in tournament play, while Noonan, a sophomore forward, has a goal and two assists and Fundenberger, a senior forward, has two goals.\n"We just need to keep doing what we've been doing in the first two games, and that's working both offensively and defensively," Noonan said. "And creating chances and finishing the chances that we have. And so far, we've done that throughout the playoffs."\nBut the Hoosiers have yet to do it against a team as talented as North Carolina.\n"They're the real deal," Yeagley said. "They have no weaknesses. They have good bench strength. And, like I've been told from a number of coaches, they're the biggest, strongest team that we'll play this year"