Ohio State men’s soccer’s emergence as the top-ranked team in the country seemingly came out of nowhere. But the Buckeyes themselves always believed they could have a special team this season.
The Buckeyes weren’t even ranked in the United Soccer Coaches’ preseason poll for Division I men’s soccer, and understandably so. Entering this season, Ohio State had only one winning season in six years under head coach Brian Maisonneuve and went just 6-6-6 in 2023.
Inside the program, however, Ohio State’s players were confident they had what it would take to become a championship contender this season.
“My roommate freshman year was (fellow junior midfielder) Luciano Pechota and we talked quite a bit and we had been saying that these next couple of years and when we get older, there's going to be something special. So I think we've been saying it since we were freshmen and continue to say it,” Ohio State midfielder Ashton Bilow told Eleven Warriors.
Ohio State was coming off of back-to-back losing seasons when Maisonneuve took over the program in 2018, and the Buckeyes had four more losing seasons in a row to start Maisonneuve’s tenure as coach. The Buckeyes finally ended their seven-year NCAA Tournament drought in 2022 when the Buckeyes went 11-3-6 and made the second round of the national tournament. But after a step back last season, Ohio State has finally emerged as the championship-caliber team Maisonneuve always believed it could be, entering the postseason as the No. 1 team in the United Soccer Coaches poll.
Week 11 @UnitedCoaches Men's Rankings #NCAASoccer pic.twitter.com/hpjkZG0UQR
— NCAA Soccer (@NCAASoccer) November 5, 2024
“I said it at the beginning of the year, this is a special group, and they've shown it,” Maisonneuve said Thursday. “They've stepped up actually from preseason, from the first game of the season against Cleveland State, where things didn't go our way, but the guys stayed together and stuck to the process and just did a great job. I mean, they work so hard individually and for the team, and the locker room's great. It's a joy to work with this group.”
The Buckeyes are the No. 1 seed in the Big Ten Tournament, where they’ll play No. 4 seed Washington in the semifinals on Sunday at 5:30 p.m. (Big Ten Network) at SeatGeek Stadium in Bridgeview, Illinois. If the Buckeyes defeat the Spartans, they’ll host the Big Ten Championship Game against either UCLA or Michigan at 2 p.m. the following Sunday, Nov. 17.
Ohio State enters the postseason with a 12-1-3 record, having already achieved its most wins in a season since 2015. The Buckeyes tied Indiana for the best record in conference play (7-1-2) to earn their first regular-season Big Ten championship since 2015. The Buckeyes are now chasing their first Big Ten Tournament championship since 2009.
Take a look at the highlights of the game that sealed us a B1G regular season championship! #gobucks pic.twitter.com/KtN74idszp
— Ohio State Mens Soccer (@OhioStateMSOC) November 8, 2024
After the Big Ten Tournament, Ohio State will enter the NCAA Tournament with legitimate hopes of winning the program’s first-ever national championship. The Buckeyes have only made it to the national championship game once, falling to Wake Forest in the 2007 NCAA Tournament final, but enter this year’s postseason as one of the favorites to win it all.
Ohio State has built its success off of its depth. Twelve different players have scored at least one goal this season, including five players who have scored at least five goals. Michael Adedokun, a fifth-year senior midfielder from Nigeria who transferred to OSU in 2023 after three years at Dayton, leads the Big Ten with 27 points on eight goals and a conference-leading 11 assists.
“I think it's the consistency of what we have done,” Maisonneuve said when asked what’s enabled Ohio State to become the No. 1 team in the country. “We're healthy this year, and we're scoring goals. That always makes life a lot easier, but the guys have done a really good job just rallying around one another and fighting for each other.
“Not anything different than we've had in the past, but being healthy this year. Last year, we were riddled by injuries, which was tough. This year, we're deep and we can rotate guys, and when somebody does go down with an injury, the next guy steps up, and guys don't care if they're starting or coming in or playing 10 minutes or playing 90 minutes. They're there to support one another, and it's just been a lot of fun.”
“I said it at the beginning of the year, this is a special group, and they've shown it.”– Ohio State men’s soccer coach Brian Maisonneuve
Adedokun, who said he believed Ohio State could be an elite team when he transferred to OSU because of Maisonneuve’s coaching, said he thinks the team has a different mentality this season that has enabled it to become great.
“It's just the mentality, the mentality that everybody has, like, ‘Yeah, I want to win,’” Adedokun said. “The desire, the hunger, like, ‘You know what, last year wasn't great enough the way we wanted, but we can go out there and give a little bit more than what we gave last year.’”
Ohio State has excelled on both sides of the pitch as the Buckeyes lead the Big Ten in both goals scored (42) and goals allowed (16) this season.
“Scoring goals is great and we've been fortunate to score goals, but we talk about it a lot, our defending is what has gotten us here,” Maisonneuve said. “Don't get me wrong, we’ve scored some goals and our offense has been pretty potent, but defense wins championships. So we’ve got to make sure we focus on that, but then we’ve also got to be dangerous in the attack. We’ve got to execute. We’ve got to be creative. We can't be hesitant. When we're aggressive is when we're a better side, and so we’ve got to continue to that on both sides of the ball.”
Now that the Buckeyes are entering the postseason, the pressure ratchets up as just one loss can ruin their Big Ten or national championship hopes. But the Buckeyes are embracing the pressure that comes with being the No. 1-ranked team.
“There's a little bit of pressure that goes with it, but I think that pressure is a privilege,” Bilow said. “We're ready for everything that comes our way. So just the ability to continue to fight new challenges is something that, although we don't really look at the rankings that much, we know that we're facing internal battles and external battles every day that we step on the field.”
Given the success they’ve already had this season, the Buckeyes don’t feel like they need to do anything different than what they’ve been doing to continue winning in the postseason; they just have to make sure they continue doing the things that carried them to success throughout the regular season.
“That’s it. I mean, nothing really changes. Obviously everybody knows in the postseason, it's win and advance, so there's a little bit more on that,” Maisonneuve said. “But all year long, we've done whatever we had to do to be successful and find results, and I think the guys have showed that.”
The No. 1 ranking puts an unfamiliar target on Ohio State’s back entering the postseason, but the Buckeyes’ rise up the rankings hasn’t changed their approach as they focus on one day and one game at a time.
“It's exciting, and it's a credit to the guys in the locker room, it's a credit to the program, it's great for the program, but it's business as usual, and the guys know it,” Maisonneuve said. “It adds a little bit more excitement to what we do, but in terms of them looking at it or getting a little bit overconfident, I don't think it even fazed the guys. They know what's the task at hand, and it's always about the next team.”
