Maryland (0-6-2 B1G) takes on Wisconsin (4-3-1 B1G) on Thursday at noon in Madison.
The Terps are still winless this season, and are coming off two losses last week to Michigan and Iowa as the Terps currently sit last in the Big Ten standings.
Wisconsin went 1-1 last week, winning 1-0 over Northwestern before losing 1-0 to Indiana last Sunday.
Wisconsin’s redshirt senior goalkeeper Jordan Bloomer and senior midfielder Maia Cella were named as candidates for the Senior CLASS Award earlier this week, celebrating players’ performance on and off the pitch. No Maryland players were named as candidates.
Maryland is looking to turn things around before the end of the regular season after a bad 1-0 overtime loss to Iowa in its last game, who was also previously winless. Maryland head coach Ray Leone and the junior forward Emily McNesby were disappointed with the team’s performance against Iowa.
“They’re an experienced team, and they know that they didn’t perform at their best,” Leone said. “It’s more about how to put it behind us, and try to not bring whatever bad stuff that’s happened to us to the next game. We really have been playing well against Rutgers and Michigan and we just didn’t do that today. That’s the disappointing thing.”
“We wouldn’t question how hard we worked and how badly we wanted it,” McNesby added. “I just think we weren’t super clean with passing the ball and passing the ball out of the back, just simple things we weren’t clean enough with.”
Despite the disappointing start to the season, McNesby said they weren’t prepared to give up.
“Looking forward to the [rest of the] season, we’re not going to give up no matter what,” McNesby said. “We’re a team that’s not going to give up no matter how many losses we have, how many ties, whatever. It is pretty unfortunate and disappointing, but we’re not going to put our heads down and we just have to work on those simple things and get cleaner. I know we can do that.”
This game will mark the first of three consecutive road contests which will end Maryland’s regular season, followed by games at Minnesota and Penn State.
