The roughly minute-long trek from the midfield line to the Jerry F. Tardy Center a little after 10 p.m. Tuesday night didn’t look much different.
Indiana men’s soccer head coach Todd Yeagley, dressed in his typical black and white Adidas compression shirt and matching shorts, strode from one end of the grass to the other under the glimmering lights of Bill Armstrong Stadium.
Gripping a can of sparkling water in his right hand, Yeagley made the march he’s made thousands of times. His steps intentional, head never peering away from the field bearing his father’s namesake, Yeagley seems tranquil.
Indiana’s 1-1 draw with the University of Evansville undoubtedly shrunk its margin for error in the upcoming stretch of Big Ten play. For some teams, that might be a daunting pressure.
But for Yeagley and the Hoosiers, pressure simply precedes winning.
“Pressure’s OK,” Yeagley said. “If you’re fortunate enough to make the postseason, there’s always pressure. So, you just feel it earlier.”
On Sept. 13, senior forward Tommy Mihalic’s 87th-minute goal clinched a 1-0 victory over Rutgers in Piscataway, New Jersey. That win felt like the start of Indiana’s inevitable turnaround. A sign that, despite a 1-2-2 start through five matches, the Hoosiers would flip the switch they always seem to.
But after Tuesday’s draw with Evansville, a team coming off three consecutive losses to Lindenwood University, Butler University and Drake University, the momentum was zapped. Despite firing 20 shots on the Purple Aces’ freshman goalkeeper Michal Mroz, just one found the back of the net.
While senior forward Sam Sarver’s 31st minute goal — his first of the season — kept Indiana safe for a long spell, there was a need for extra insurance. Junior forward Collins Oduro had a share of chances, but he fired a trio of shots just wide left of the post.
RelatedSam Sarver offers dynamic attacking, defensive versatility in Indiana’s win over Rutgers
Sarver played 90 minutes in each of the Hoosiers’ last five matches.
Freshman forward Michael Nesci too had opportunities, but the most dangerous of his three shots was punched away by Mroz for a corner kick. None of Mihalic’s three chances were the answer, either.
In the second half, Evansville logged five of its total six shots. It only took one, a 73rd minute, world-class strike from redshirt freshman midfielder Jacopo Fedrizzi to make Indiana’s missed opportunities sting.
“You don’t put the second or third away, that can happen,” Yeagley said. “You see it around the world, you see it in the college game, you just hope it’s not you.”
For most of the second half, the Hoosiers vied for another goal without the help of graduate forward Justin Weiss. Weiss, who missed two games with a calf injury he suffered in Indiana’s 2-0 win over Yale University on Sept. 1, played all 90 minutes against Rutgers.
He only took one shot against the Scarlet Knights, but Weiss was consistently involved in attacking combinations. Tuesday night was no different, and after playing the entire first half, Yeagley said they tried to “save him a little bit.”
“We thought we could get the goals — the second or third — without him,” Yeagley said.
Roughly four minutes after Evansville’s equalizer, Weiss was brought back on for Nesci. He narrowly missed a pair of shots in the waning minutes of the match, the first blocked near the goal line by Purple Aces’ freshman defender Martin Wurschmidt, and the second an outside the box attempt that whistled no more than a couple feet wide of the post.
Yeagley doesn’t believe the Hoosiers are playing at the underwhelming level their 2-2-3 record indicates. As inconsistent results and missed opportunities continue to mount, there’s a greater reliance on dominating a conference schedule packed with formidable competition.
RelatedIndiana men’s soccer roundtable: IDS reporters predict remainder of season
The Hoosiers compiled a 1-2-2 record through their first five games.
In a week from Friday, Indiana takes on No. 7 Ohio State in Columbus, Ohio. Four days later, it travels to Madison, Wisconsin. for a date with the No. 17 Badgers. Two weeks after that, the Hoosiers are in Ann Arbor, Michigan, to face the No. 16 Wolverines.
For Indiana’s postseason dreams to take shape, positive results in those matches will be paramount. Sound like pressure?
“Tomorrow, sun comes up, we get after it,” Yeagley said. “It’s always the same, right? I’ve seen this show before.”
Follow reporters Matt Press (@MattPress23) and Mateo Fuentes-Rohwer (@mateo_frohwer) for updates throughout the Indiana men’s soccer season.
