Column: Zavaleta is key to another IU championship

In order to be successful, every soccer team needs a great striker to push their offense over the edge.

This year at IU, that striker is sophomore Eriq Zavaleta.

Zavaleta was named the Big Ten Player of the Week last week following his two-goal performance against Cincinnati in the Billiken Classic. This was the third time he was presented with that honor.

But Zavaleta is going to need to continue this level of play if IU wants to lift the championship trophy for the first time in eight years.

Zavaleta was the leading goal scorer as a freshman in 2011-12 with 10 goals and five assists.

This year, he will have to help make up for the loss of captain Alec Purdie and leading assister Tommy Meyer.

In addition to Zavaleta, Nikita Kotlov is the only Hoosier who scored more than three goals last season and still remains on the team.

Kotlov was not a usual starter last year. He started only nine of the team’s 22 games but scored nine goals.

The only Hoosier that made this type of impact offensively in the last decade or so was Will Bruin, who in three years scored 33 goals. Bruin is ranked 15th for most goals in IU history.

Zavaleta will need to be even better than Bruin.
In three years, Bruin put on 257 shots with just 33 going for goals. That’s a 12.8 scoring percentage.

So far, Zavaleta has scored 13 career goals in 62 shots, a scoring percentage of about 21 percent.

Should Zavaleta maintain that rate, he has a shot at averaging a goal a game, something a Hoosier hasn’t done since Ken Snow broke the single-season record for goals in 1987.

It’s understandable that IU needs a player like Zavaleta, too.

This is a team that has won seven titles since the program started under legendary former Head Coach Jerry Yeagley in 1973. The Hoosier’s haven’t won the Big Ten Tournament in six years.

As Zavaleta continues his sophomore season, he will be expected to raise the bar and put up much better numbers on a team that lost some of its best offensive talents during the summer.

Perhaps Zavaleta can spark a team that has lately been known for its defense.
In IU’s last three tournament losses, the Hoosiers only scored one goal.

In fact, IU has great trouble scoring against top-five teams. In addition to a five-goal outburst against No. 5 UCLA in 2010, IU scored just two goals in seven games against top-five teams in the last three years.

Zavaleta will likely need to put up a career-best year in order to get the Hoosiers back to the championship, and if his two-goal game against Cincinnati is any preview of what’s to come, he is a force to be reckoned with.

­— zstavis@indiana.edu