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Friday, March 29
The Indiana Daily Student

sports men's soccer

Highly-touted Hoosier squad sets lofty expectations for upcoming season

Experience plus chemistry equals expected success.

With more than half of last year’s roster returning, the Hoosiers’ expectations for this season are high. Despite a loaded schedule of nine top-25 teams as well as road games at Akron, UC.

Santa Barbara and Notre Dame, the IU coaching staff expects leadership from top-skill position players and 11 upperclassmen.  

Following exhibition games this weekend against Drake and DePaul, the Hoosiers come home to face No. 5 St. John’s and No. 3 Wake Forest in the IU Credit Union Classic. The Hoosiers fell to St. John’s last season in the NCAA Tournament, making last year’s senior class the first class not to make an NCAA Final Four appearance since the 1990s.
 
The anticipation for a return to glory is most certainly in the air, however. The Hoosiers are ranked in the top 10 in all five major soccer polls, most recently named fourth nationally by Soccer America.

IU is also ranked first in the Big Ten by conference coaches for the seventh straight season.  

Seven starters return for the Hoosiers, led by senior All-Big Ten midfielder Eric Alexander and 2008 Big Ten Freshman of the Year forward Will Bruin. Final rosters for this season will be hammered out starting against Drake at 7 p.m. today in Fort Wayne.

Notable Quotes

“I’m not worried about Drake or any of those other teams. The only team I’m worried about is Indiana. I feel really good about this season right now and think we have the potential to have the strongest team we’ve had in a while.”
Mike Freitag, coach

“It’s definitely more important to just click as a team and play well. Obviously in soccer you can play really well but the outcome doesn’t always go your way. We like to win. We’re winners. So if we lose we’ll be disappointed … but as long as we play well as a team we’re happy.”
Andy Adlard, midfielder

“Right now we’re just sticking to our own game plan. We have a lot of big games, especially our tournament at the beginning of the year. Big Ten games and in-state games are always really tough, too.”
Daniel Kelly, midfielder

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