IU ties, loses at Mike Berticelli Tournament

The IU men’s soccer team hoped to leave the Mike Berticelli Tournament in South Bend this weekend with continued confidence defensively and a solution to its lack of scoring.

Neither happened.

The Hoosiers lost 4-0 to Dartmouth on Sunday after tying No. 5 South Florida 0-0 Friday night.

“You can’t think you are going to get success just because you are Indiana,” IU coach Mike Freitag said. “Some players have not played up to potential as of yet, and I am waiting for that to happen. Hopefully this is the shock to get them there.”

Although IU (1-1-2) failed to score after two overtime periods, it started Friday’s matchup against the Bulls (1-1-1) with plenty of firepower offensively.

Sophomore Daniel Kelly had the game’s first shot at the five-minute mark, but it sailed wide of the goal. By the time the game reached 25 minutes, the Hoosiers had already tallied six shots, none of which went in.

It wasn’t until the 87th minute that IU senior goalkeeper Chay Cain was truly tested by USF’s offense. Cain blocked a hard shot by senior forward Jordan Seabrook to keep the game even at the end of regulation and into overtime. Despite a shot by senior John Mellencamp and two from sophomore Andy Adlard in the extra periods, the Hoosiers were unable to put the ball in the back of the net and settled for the tie.

Cain said the end result was not what the team had wanted, but he will take the tie against one of the top teams in the country.

“It is frustrating for the whole team,” Cain said. “We are expected to win every game, and we put a lot of pressure on ourselves from that aspect. At the same time, South Florida is a very good team so a tie is not a terrible result for us.”

But while the defense was stellar Friday night, it was a whole different story Sunday against the Big Green (1-1-0).

Cain went off his line to retrieve a loose ball 16 minutes into the game. But as he was about to pick it up, Dartmouth freshman forward Lucky Mkosana stole the ball and scored.

With momentum siding with the Big Green, the offensive scoring attack did not relinquish. Big Green senior forward/midfielder Craig Henderson scored at the 63:31 mark after going one-on-one against Cain, and he headed in another off a throw-in only a minute later. Dartmouth freshman forward Maarten van Ess put the game out of reach for the Hoosiers when he headed in a free kick from Big Green defender Bryan Giudicelli in the 78th minute.

The outcome was the third consecutive game in which IU was unable to score.
“It is a little bit of a gut-check for us – we got dominated today,” senior midfielder Brad Ring said. “We played very well defensively the first three games, but this one was terrible. (Offensively) we have to create more chances, and when we create these chances we need to put them away.”

Freitag said the only positives to take away from the tournament were weaknesses exploited that need to be worked on.

“Hopefully, this is a wake-up call,” Freitag said. “All in all, it is a team loss that we need to look at ourselves, watch tape and see what we need to do to get better. We play a schedule as hard as anybody in the country, and if we don’t come with our A-game, as we didn’t today, we will lose.”

With the weekend a disappointment for the Hoosiers, they look to improve Friday when they travel to Los Angeles for a crucial matchup against No. 14 UCLA.

“I think we learned a lot about ourselves this weekend,” Ring said. “We found out that we are a lot more vulnerable in the back than we thought we were and that we may have trouble scoring goals. We will go in with all the confidence in the world against UCLA and are looking to have a great matchup against them.”