The Louisville men’s soccer team will try to book its third straight trip to the NCAA Elite Eight when it hosts Northwestern at 7 this Sunday.
It will be the first meeting between the two programs, but there will be an element of the familiar nevertheless.
Three of the Wildcats’ starting midfielders played their high school soccer in Louisville: senior Kyle Schickel at St. X, and juniors Layth Masri at Collegiate and Lepe Seetane at Trinity. That should produce a larger than usual contingent of supporters for the visitors at Cardinal Park.
The Cardinals and Northwestern also have faced a slew of common opponents. Louisville has gone 4-2-1 against common opposition, while the Wildcats are 5-1-2, having played and beaten Ohio State twice, by a combined score of 3-0. The Cards knocked off OSU 4-0 in their only meeting. UofL and NU both beat Notre Dame by a 2-1 score, and both tied Indiana. Louisville beat DePaul 3-0, while Northwestern lost 2-0. The Wildcats have beaten two teams that beat the Cards: Kentucky and, most recently, Marquette in the NCAA round of 32 last Sunday.
Overall records are similar as well: Louisville is 13-5-1, while Northwestern is 13-5-4. But the Cards have played a much tougher schedule, a fact reflected in their higher RPI- 17 vs 41 – and ranking in the final coaches’ poll, where they were 17th position and Northwestern was in 10th among the unranked teams receiving votes. And Louisville is hosting this game by virtue of being the 10th seed, while Northwestern is unseeded.
Louisville appears to be much the more potent offensive outfit, scoring at a 1.89 goals/game clip, while the Wildcats tally 1.23 goal per contest. The Cards put more of their shots on goal and put a higher percentage of those into the back of the net. Defensively, the two teams are more equal, with the Cards giving up .95 goals per contest, to .82 for Northwestern.
The Cards should have a load of momentum coming into the match, having blown out Winthrop 5-0 last Sunday while dominating in every phase of the game. Northwestern ground out a 1-0 win at #7 seed Marquette, a victory most notable for the defensive effort.
Two other factors also may work in the Cards’ favor. They have far more experience in this kind of a pressure-packed game, having made deep runs in the NCAAs in the past two years. Northwestern was 0-1 in the Big Dance over the past two seasons.
And Louisville should benefit from a vocal home crowd. How loud it will be is a bit of a question mark. Fewer than 1,500 turned out for the Winthrop match on a perfect night. That is well below par for NCAA contests in previous years in far worse weather. The Cards need a crowd more akin to the 5,000-plus that attended each of the three home games on the road to the College Cup two years ago.
A chilly night is forecast for Sunday, but a packed house will feel a lot warmer.