Having already lost 1-0 to No. 4 seeded Indiana earlier in the season, the No. 5 seeded Wisconsin men's soccer team was looking to turn the tables and pull off an upset on head coach Todd Yeagley's alma mater. Unfortunately for the Badgers, a pair of goals in the second half by Indiana sophomore forward Will Bruin deflated any hopes the Badgers had of claiming their first Big Ten Tournament victory since 2003.
Despite Indiana holding a 8-3 shooting advantage, Wisconsin was able to hold the Hoosiers to a scoreless first half and went into the break with a 0-0 draw. It did not take long for Indiana to come out and dictate the pace of the game in the second half, however. Just 20 seconds in, Bruin capitalized on an Indiana scoring opportunity and put the Hoosiers up 1-0.
With the Wisconsin offense sputtering, Indiana maintained possession for most of the game and, more specifically, the second half. This allowed the Hoosiers to outshoot the Badgers 14-4 in the half and 22-7 in the entire game.
Indiana took advantage of its many shots by converting another scoring chance in the 68th minute from a familiar source—Will Bruin.
Bruin collected the rebound from his initial shot and put the second attempt home for his second goal of the game and third against the Badgers this season.
""We tried to neutralize Will as much as possible, but if you put too much emphasis on him, you have a slew of very talented players to contend with,"" Yeagley said, returning to Armstrong Stadium for the first time since his assistant coaching days at Indiana. ""We knew we had to be at our best and get a few breaks, and I thought we did that in the first half.""
It was a disappointing end to a promising season for the Badgers, who will lose nine seniors to graduation. Of those seniors, Wisconsin will sorely miss forward/midfielder Scott Lorenz, who has been the catalyst for the Badgers offense for the past couple seasons and had their only shot on goal against the Hoosiers.
""For these seniors and upperclassmen to give us so much of what they had, I was very proud of them and felt very fortunate to be able to work with them,"" Yeagley said. ""They gave us every bit they could but, unfortunately, we came up a little bit short.""
With a final record of 7-9-2, an at-large NCAA Tournament bid will not be in the cards for Wisconsin, who effectively needed to win the entire Big Ten tournament to continue its season.
—uwbadgers.com contributed to this report.
