On Friday, the UW men's soccer team will face Indiana to determine the Big Ten conference champion. With that in mind, it would be easy enough for the men in cardinal and white to simply overlook Tuesday's matchup with UW-Green Bay in anticipation of the IU game.
Ideally, the Badgers (3-1-1 Big Ten, 9-5-2 overall) would storm past the visiting Phoenix tonight en route to Friday's game, but things will not be that easy. UW-Green Bay enters the contest with an 11-5-2 record and comes to Madison hungry.
After starting off 5-0 in the Horizon League, it seemed that the Phoenix held its destiny in its own hands, though after dropping its last two conference games, UW-GB saw the conference title handed to Illinois-Chicago Sunday afternoon. Needless to say, the Phoenix will be looking for retribution.
The Badgers come into tonight's game looking for a little retribution of their own. The Badgers came out on the short end of a 1-0 overtime result at the hands of No. 19 Northern Illinois. With the anticipation of the Indiana game, and the memory of the NIU loss, the Badgers will look to fine tune its game against UW-GB.
As if those factors weren't enough, tonight's game also marks the final home game for nine UW players. Tonight the Badgers will honor Hamid Afsari, William Bagayoko, Andrew Cardona, Christopher Ede, co-captain Aaron Hohlbein, Frank Iaizzo, Matthew Jelacic, Reid Johnson and co-captain Jake Settle as they take the home field for the last time in a regular season game.
These in-state rivals have met 29 times with UW holding a slight edge in the records at 15-14, though Wisconsin has been downright dominant as of late, winning 12 of the last 15 (including a 3-0 victory last season). On top of that, the Badgers are 9-5-0 at home against the Phoenix.
The game tonight will undoubtedly be closely contested and will likely come down to one or two moments that determine the outcome. The Badgers, led by a defense that has allowed only nine goals this season, will once again look for an offensive spark to be the difference maker. The role has not been reliably filled this season and as the season approaches crunch time, the Badgers will need someone, be it Victor Diaz, Zach Lambo or perhaps last week's Big Ten Offensive Player of the Week Scott Lorenz, to step up and provide a reliable striker option for the UW.
The same cannot be said for UW-GB. The Phoenix have been led offensively by Joshua Okoampa as he has tallied 32 points this season (13 G, 6 A). Settle, last week's Big Ten Defensive Player of the Week (earning the honor for the third time this season) will once again need to bring his A game if he hopes to slow down Okoampa and the Phoenix attack.
Nevertheless, win, lose or draw tonight, the Badgers will still travel to Bloomington, Indiana to challenge the Hoosiers for the Big Ten Conference title Friday night.
