Make it four in a row.

For the fourth consecutive year, NIU has hoisted the LeWang Cup after a 5-1 victory over University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee.

The 3 p.m. kickoff wasn’t in NIU head coach Eric Luzzi’s favor, but after everything was said and done, he was happy with the result.

“You’ve got to give credit to the guys because they came out ready to play, they came out with a lot of energy, and we were able to get a leg up early,” Luzzi said. “It’s hard for both teams in a mid-week, three o’clock game to get up for it, and credit to our guys because they were up for it.”

The Huskies (7-6-1, 1-2-0) opened up the scoring in the 18th minute as senior defender Josh Karsten headed a ball into the back of the net via a free kick from senior midfielder Luis De La Cerda for his fourth of the year.

Eight minutes later, NIU broke through again off of another free kick where sophomore midfielder Brad Horton put one by the keeper nearpost for his fifth of the season.

“I was in a little drought there for a while and I haven’t gotten one in a while so getting one before the end of the season going into the tournament is huge,” said Horton.

Senior forward Ben Thomas, sophomore midfielder Jason Guehler and sophomore forward Johnny Tyma all added a goal each for the Huskies’ largest output of the season.

After 87 minutes of shutout soccer, NIU finally gave up one on a free kick from just outside the 18 yard box.

“I thought the last 20 minutes was sloppy,” Luzzi said. “The management of the lead was not good enough. When we’re up like that, we need to lock the game down and not to look to score more goals. I would have much rather won 3-0 or 4-0 than 5-1. And for the fact that we got a little greedy in the last 20 minutes was a little disappointing.”

The Panthers (3-9-2, 2-2-2) were out-shot 19-16 with most of the team’s attack and scoring chances coming in the last 20 minutes of the match.

“To be a little fair to Milwaukee, we caught them on a flat day,” said Luzzi. “We had seen some tape of them and they’re a pretty good team who has been playing well recently. It’s not like we were a far superior team; we just played with a lot of energy.”

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