The aftermath of Indiana men’s soccer’s penalty shootout loss to the University of Notre Dame in last year’s NCAA Tournament quarterfinals is still a crushing image.
There’s then-senior goalkeeper JT Harms, shuffling away to avoid the surge of Irish faithful engulfing their home pitch in South Bend, Indiana. It came a little less than a year after Harms, and the Hoosiers fell to Syracuse University in the NCAA title match via penalties.
Then there’s a group of Indiana players huddled around midfield, some with hands on their hips, others crouching to the turf, staring directly at the chaotic celebration.
That was last season. If history is any indication, a demoralizing loss from the year prior doesn’t invoke any premonitions of a downward spiral for the program.
At 8 p.m. Thursday night at Bill Armstrong Stadium, Indiana will get another crack at Notre Dame.
For a squad coming off a sluggish 2-0 defeat to Saint Louis University on Aug. 23, a clash with last year’s NCAA runner-up may hardly seem like a beneficial way to instill confidence.
But that’s just the way head coach Todd Yeagley likes it.
“We don’t make it easy,” Yeagley said Tuesday afternoon. “It gets them excited to bounce back from what happened last week.”
Continuing trend of early season gauntlets
Saint Louis — a historical powerhouse which recently checked in No. 6 in the nation’s rankings — certainly presented challenges in last week’s season opener. Scheduling tough opponents in the early going isn’t novel for Yeagley and the Hoosiers.
Last season, Indiana faced Notre Dame and then-No. 9 University of Washington within the first three matches. In 2022, the Hoosiers began the year in Clemson, South Carolina, for a date with the reigning NCAA champion Tigers.
In that match, while Indiana fell 3-2, players like Ryan Wittenbrink and now-senior forward Sam Sarver spearheaded a valiant attacking effort. There was reason, despite the loss, for hope.
After returning from Saint Louis, Yeagley wasn’t left with a similar feeling.
“You left there very optimistic,” Yeagley said about the Clemson match. “This one you’re like ‘who was that? Who was in our uniform? Who was that team?’”
Sure, Indiana could schedule lighter competition and pad its statistics. But for the sake of the Hoosiers’ revamped group, Yeagley believes evaluation is paramount.
From last week’s match, Yeagley said Harms was the only player to have an “A-game.” Freshman center back Jack Lindimore looked uneasy in early segments, and even experienced midfielders and forwards appeared at times discombobulated.
But that doesn’t take away from the emergence of freshman forward Michael Nesci and freshman midfielder Charlie Heuer, who played 60 and 21 minutes, respectively, flashing moments of maturity and aggression.
As Yeagley continues to tinker with rotations, he thinks seeing his squad against formidable opposition is the best barometer.
“If we want to win more, I would schedule easier,” Yeagley said. “If we want to see really where we’re at, I gotta keep doing it.”
Recovering from ‘really poor’ offensive outing
While Indiana didn’t score against Saint Louis, it wasn’t the only metric for gauging its attacking success. The Hoosiers, especially in the first half, rarely strung together threatening possessions past midfield.
Graduate student forward Justin Weiss, who transferred from Northwestern this offseason, told Yeagley he had the weakest performance of his entire career against the Billikens. Weiss only played 48 minutes and missed a penalty kick late in the match.
“Offensively we were really poor on the night,” Yeagley said. “A lot of it started with our decisions on where to play and when to play, and where to go long and where to play short.”
As a unit, the Hoosiers’ attack struggled probing into a tall, experienced Saint Louis backline. Yeagley mentioned the playing surface as a factor, as passes traveled slower than they would on other fields.
Indiana’s midfielders continually lost battles, both aerial and on the ground, when jostling with the Billikens. But even when attacks seemed promising, they proved short-lived.
The Hoosiers took just three corner kicks, all coming in the second half.
“Us not creating corner kicks is a big signal that we were not in a front half possession enough,” Yeagley said.
Veterans look to regain composure
Yeagley said the match against Saint Louis was “emotional” for fifth-year senior Jansen Miller facing Indiana transfer Joey Maher, the Billikens’ senior center back. Maher, whose younger brother Josh is a freshman for the Hoosiers, forged a strong partnership with Miller anchoring talented backlines.
Lawson Redmon played his first three seasons with Indiana, but he transferred with Maher to Saint Louis for his senior season. For Hoosier seniors like Sarver, Miller, Tommy Mihalic and Patrick McDonald, Yeagley said the familiarity factored into pregame nerves.
“Anxiousness can make you a little heavy,” Yeagley said. “Just waiting for the game and thinking about it. There were a lot of guys thinking about this game for a long time because of the matchup, the historic rivalry, the players that were their teammates on the other side of the field.”
But he said this week of training has featured competitive sparring.
Against Notre Dame, which fell out of the NCAA top 25 after drawing with the University of Akron on Aug. 22, Indiana has the luxury of an eager home crowd. But it also lines up against some of Notre Dame’s top returners like junior midfielder KK Baffour and senior forward Matthew Roou, along with sophomore midfielder Nolan Spicer.
For Indiana’s season to achieve the ideal trajectory, veteran contributions are a necessity. Thursday night’s match, which will also be streamed on Big Ten+, will be another test for the Hoosiers and 90 minutes of evaluation for Yeagley and his staff.
It's all with the desire that, later this season, these tests will pay off.
Matt Press covers Indiana men’s soccer for the Indiana Daily Student. Follow him on X @MattPress23 or reach him via email at mtpress@iu.edu.
