With No. 11 Northwestern coming to DeKalb, the NIU men’s soccer team received an opportunity to showcase itself against one of the best teams in the country.

The Huskies did that, and recorded one of the school’s biggest wins in history.
Marcus McCarty scored his second goal of the match off a missed shot nearly two minutes into the second overtime, capping a 2-1 victory over the Wildcats.
NIU coach Steve Simmons said he could not have been more proud after the match.

“I think a lot of times the difference is belief,” Simmons said. “And so I credit the guys for continuing to believe.”

After having many matches this year result unfavorably for the Huskies, NIU (5-6-4) finally earned a result it deserved against perhaps its most difficult opponent.

“Buffalo was a hard loss,” Simmons said of last weekend’s overtime loss to the Bulls. “It was hard. And they still came out and played like they were playing for a national championship. Sometimes you have to have these types of results to reaffirm. And today they deserved that. They’ve been deserving results like this for a long time.”

Playing with a strong wind, Northwestern got ahead midway through the second half on a goal by Matt Witt off a corner kick.

The Huskies almost waited too long to tie the score, knotting the match on McCarty’s fourth goal of the season.

McCarty then finished off the Wildcats with his goal in second overtime off a rebound. Drew Jeskey’s header was saved, and the ball was kept alive for McCarty, who found the net.

“We have this thing in practice where we try to keep the ball alive in the box,” McCarty said. “We’ve been stressing it a lot lately because we’ve missed a ton of opportunities. It was one of those cases where everyone was just trying to keep it in play.”

“What that game today shows is that with the top ranked teams in the country, we can beat them,” Simmons said. “Northwestern is a fantastic team. For us to do what we did today shows the resiliency and the fact that they continue to believe.”

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