Nov. 7, 2014
UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. - By Matt Allibone, GoPSUsports.com Student Staff Writer UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa.- The Penn State men's soccer team is approaching the Big Ten Tournament a little differently this year.
"I've been on different sides of this thing," head coach Bob Warming said. "We want to win the Big Ten. The statistics show that the team that loses in the conference tournament goes deeper in the NCAA tournament. That was with the old format ... with the new model, we might as well just go ahead and win it."
Although some teams are wary of going far in the conference tournament for fear of being too tired when the NCAA Tournament rolls around, that isn't Penn State's plan.
This year, the Lions will have four days in between games if they can get past the Spartans. Their second game won't take place until Friday, November 14.
"We're going right through," senior forward Mikey Minutillo said. "I think we're going to go all the way until the end and win the conference tournament. We're playing good and it's a bummer we didn't win the Big Ten outright but we've still got the tournament to fall back on."
Both Warming and the players aren't going to lie. They're disappointed they weren't able to capture their third straight conference title.
Last Sunday against Northwestern, the Lions were 100 seconds away from securing the tie needed to win the regular-season championship before a double overtime goal from Mike Roberge gave them a heartbreaking 2-1 loss.
Needing Rutgers to tie or beat Maryland on Wednesday in order to still pull out a conference championship, the Nittany Lions weren't so lucky. The Terrapins defeated the Scarlet Nights, 3-2, at the same time Penn State wrapped up its regular-season with a 1-0 win over Akron.
"We were a 100 seconds away from winning our third one," Warming said. "That was massively disappointing and because we played so well. It was just disappointing how we lost.
"But to their credit, guys are back playing hard tonight (against Akron) and we can't control [the Maryland game] and just move on to the next thing."
Penn State will also have plenty of motivation because of the first-round matchup they've drawn.
While the Spartans won their regular season finale against Indiana on Wednesday 3-2, they've recently endured a tough stretch of their own, having gone 0-2-2 in four games after their win over Penn State.
"I think our guys are always itching to win," Warming said. "I think it's going to be an incredible tournament. I told the [other Big Ten] coaches in the conference call the other day, `we have the best collection of goalkeepers I've ever seen in the history of any conference I've ever been in.'"
The last time the Nittany Lions won the Big Ten Tournament was in 2005, five years before Warming took over the program.
The mindset of the team isn't necessarily focused on ending that drought as much as it is on proving to the Big Ten it can still play at the level it was at earlier in the season.
Beating Akron on Wednesday was a good first step. The next step is stringing together consecutive victories, like the streak of seven in a row they had between September 13 and October 4.
"We talked about it right before the [Akron] game," Minutillo said. "We got to get this win so we can carry it right into the conference tournament."