Men's soccer closes regular season this weekend

One week following the comeback win against Northwestern to clinch the Big Ten regular season title, the Hoosiers travel to Ohio State for a 1 p.m. contest Sunday to wrap up the season schedule.

And they’ll try to scratch another objective off the season’s bucket list: finish with an undefeated conference record.

On paper, IU has nothing to gain or lose from Sunday’s match with the Buckeyes (9-5-2, 3-2-0). The Hoosiers (9-5-2, 4-0-1) have their ticket punched for the No. 1 seed and first round bye of next weekend’s Big Ten Tournament.

The team, however, said the Ohio State game has plenty of implications.

“Obviously we take a lot of pride in the undefeated regular season,” senior midfielder Andy Adlard said. “It hasn’t been done for a while. It would help our RPI, our seeding and would give us good confidence going into the tournament.”

Hoosier players and coaches insist that Sunday will be about keeping momentum alive moving into the conference tournament and not about seeking revenge from last year.

In 2009, the Buckeyes twice beat the Hoosiers at Bill Armstrong Stadium, including a 4-2 decision that knocked IU out of the Big Ten Tournament on its own field.

The win was OSU’s third all-time against IU, and it earned the Buckeyes a berth in the conference title game, which they won 1-0 against Penn State.

“It really doesn’t play in at all,” sophomore midfielder Joe Tolen said. “We know that this year we’re a totally different team. We don’t talk about last year much at all. We don’t think about opponents last year or results from last year. We just think about how we’re going to get the job done this year.”

Tolen got the job done Sunday when he scored the game-winning goal against Northwestern, which put the Hoosiers in the driver seat for the upcoming tournament.

Adlard said it is vital to use the momentum to end the season on a positive note.

“If you look at any teams that have won NCAAs, they usually ended the season well,” Adlard said. “Things were going right for them, and they were scoring goals. To get these wins toward the end and start scoring some goals are very important for us.”

Tolen said the team was in a great mood this week, particularly when presenting IU Athletics Director Fred Glass with the Big Ten trophy Tuesday.

But after Wednesday’s film session, Tolen said it is back to business as usual with the team.

“It was awesome and a great accomplishment, but the task at hand now is Sunday,” Tolen, the sophomore from Evansville, said. “We have to get our focus back and know that’s just one of our goals that we’ve accomplished. Yeah, it’s great, and yeah, it’s going to be an awesome memory, but we have to get past it now and just build on it.”