Indiana University Athletics
Inside The Pitch: Red Storm Rising In Indiana
9/4/2009 12:00:00 AM | Men's Soccer
Sept. 4, 2009
By Kevin Scheitrum
NCAA.com
December had just begun to strip the color from Queens, N.Y., and the Indiana men's soccer team had 10 minutes to go until Texas. In New York for an NCAA quarterfinal game against St. John's, the Hoosiers had stifled the Red Storm all day, grinding to a 2-0 lead with just the equivalent of a coffee break between them and the warmer climes of Frisco, Tx for the College Cup.
Fourteen minutes later, they were heading back to Bloomington with a 3-2 loss, their season over after St. John's scored two goals to send the game into OT and then got another from Nelson Becerra four minutes into overtime to move into the national semifinals.
This weekend, as the D-I Men's Soccer season officially blows open across the country, the seventh-ranked Hoosiers get a chance at revenge, hosting No. 5 St. John's, No. 3 Wake Forest and No. 13 Notre Dame in the adidas/IU Credit Union Classic on Friday and Sunday. But far beyond any thoughts of early-season payback, the showcase represents an opportunity for four teams that could all find themselves in the College Cup to show how close the dreams of the preseason come to meeting up with the reality of a new year.
"It's a classic," said Indiana coach Mike Freitag. "That's what classics are supposed to be. A lot of people invite cupcakes - we want to find out what we're made of from the start."
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