Purdue Soccer Leads Big Ten through 5 Games

Third year head coach Drew Roff is having a great season with Purdue women’s soccer against all expectations. After going just 4-12-1 last season and 2-8-1 in Big Ten play the team was picked to finish 13th in the 14 team Big Ten.

That won’t happen.

After five games of the 11 game league schedule for everyone there is only one team left in the conference left without a loss: your Purdue Boilermakers. Purdue is 4-0-1 after sweeping the Illinois schools this week and has accumulated 13 points out of a possible 15. Ohio State is just behind them at 12 points, but with six games to go the Boilers have a great chance to win the Big Ten for the first time.

This weekend Purdue hosted Illinois and Northwestern and refused to give up a goal. Maddy Williams scored her 9th goal of the season and became Purdue’s all-time leader in points (goals plus assists) with 92 during Friday’s 1-0 win over Illinois. It was her 33rd career goal.

On Sunday it was a brace for Kylie Hase. She scored twice as Purdue beat Northwestern 2-0. With Ohio State’s win at Penn State that moved the Boilers into first place by themselves.

Purdue now has a tought weekend coming up at Wisconsin and Minnesota, but the Boilers are the only team in the league that has not been shut out yet. Wisconsin is only 2-2-1 in conference play after losing at Rutgers today, but they were ranked 12th nationally this past week. Minnesota is also the defending league champion.

The lone stumble in elague play so far was a 1-1 tie at Indiana last week.

Purdue is 9-2-1 overall with six games remaining. They have an RPI of 22, so an NCAA tournament berth is a strong possibility.