This past season, IU women's soccer was picked to finish last in Big Ten. That backfired.

BLOOMINGTON – What started as a motivational tactic became a rallying cry for Erwin van Bennekom’s IU women’s soccer team last fall.

As the Hoosiers ticked off one result after another — on course for their best-ever Big Ten points haul — van Bennekom spared no chance to remind his players they’d been picked joint-last in the league in the preseason. Michigan, Penn State, Purdue, the opponent didn’t matter. Every time another league team pulled up on the schedule, van Bennekom delivered his customary reminder.

“It was the best thing ever,” van Bennekom told IndyStar in a recent interview. “I just used it every week. ‘Hey, this next team, the coach probably put us last.’

“The team just embraced it. I think they just loved even me saying, ‘The other team, their staff voted you last.’”

The result was one of the best campaigns in program history. For van Bennekom and his staff, it was validation of years of fine tuning, tactical adjustment and player development that culminated in a first NCAA tournament appearance in 10 years.

“This past year, we kind of got over the hump and won some games we could’ve lost,” van Bennekom said. “I don’t like to get into, oh, we found a way to win, but down the line, if you do that five times in a row, it becomes a thing for the team. They started feeling it and believing it.

“Those expectations have gone up.”

Indiana’s success traces back to the previous season, when the Hoosiers struggled for goals but also stopped conceding them.

The Hoosiers finished 2022 second from bottom in the league, ahead of only Purdue, largely because of that fight to score. They finished with just 11 goals in 17 matches, worst in the conference. But they found defensive steel that provided a platform for van Bennekom and associate head coach Tim Verschuren to rethink their tactical approach the following offseason.

“Tim and I sat down and said, ‘This is what we’re going to do to keep defending the way we are, and just score more goals, create more chances,’” van Bennekom said. “The way we played was really a drastic change.”

Pace in their backline, coupled to (eventual) 2023 Big Ten goalkeeper of the year Jamie Gerstenberg’s comfort playing further away from her own goal, allowed the Hoosiers to deploy a high defensive line last season.

That meant pushing their defense high up the field, often as far as the halfway line. The high line created opportunities for offside traps. Pace meant the Hoosiers could recover defensively when opponents beat that trap. And Gerstenberg’s abilities outside the area allowed the Hoosiers to play through their goalie when necessary.

“We felt like for the first time in my time here, we had a backline and a goalkeeper that could defend higher up the field, with the backs basically at midfield,” van Bennekom said. “Given that, we were able to press higher, turn over teams, create more chances from that. Our defensive mentality helped us score more goals.”

The result: a pitch effectively cut in half, and opponents pinned back by IU’s high press. Rotating from a deep well of midfielders and attackers whose fresh legs helped the Hoosiers harry already pressured opponents, van Bennekom’s team reaped the benefits of the tactical switch — Indiana added 20 goals to its overall tally, up to 31 from 11.

All while that defense remained stingy. The Hoosiers conceded just 16 goals again in 2023, their 32 conceded across the past two seasons the joint-lowest such number in the Big Ten alongside Iowa.

Games that had been losses became draws. Draws became wins. The Hoosiers finished 2023 with six victories and just two defeats from 10 Big Ten games, their 20 points a program record.

The style deviated from some of van Bennekom’s earlier ideas on style of play, which sometimes emphasized more possession and reliance on interconnected passing networks. But the results were impossible to argue with. The Hoosiers’ offseason shift produced tremendous results.

“Tim and I were looking over our data the other day. We scored like 45% (of our goals) off set pieces. They were coming mostly off turnovers,” van Bennekom said. “Or it was within two or three passes after winning the ball we would score. You look at any league, women’s soccer, men’s soccer, most goals get scored that way — either set pieces, or two, three passes and a finish, not 25.”

With a solid core, including Gerstenberg, back for 2024, van Bennekom has seen ambitions grow.

Sharing the Tardy Center, Indiana’s soccer facility at Bill Armstrong Stadium, with the men’s program lends the Hoosiers perspective, van Bennekom said. But with a squad complete save one transfer expected this summer and a handful of minor injuries, and a freshmen class enrolled already, he’s also seen his team level up in training.

“Training sessions, friends come to visit and they’re like, the intensity is insane,” van Bennekom said. “We really have a culture of, we’re really going at it, almost like a Big Ten game, almost like a Purdue game, but then after training, it’s all good.

“It’s a really good standard that, probably the last time I’ve seen that was when I worked at the NWSL in 2013.”

The Hoosiers will have to find their motivation elsewhere this fall. It’s not likely anyone will be picking them to finish bottom of the league again.

But, buoyed by last year’s success and encouraged by his team’s reaction to it, van Bennekom already has one eye on his team’s next evolution. They may have to shed their underdog label, but the Hoosiers are preparing to make life difficult for anyone coming across their path this season.

“That environment, that intensity, it’s competitive. We’ll work harder than any other team,” he said. “When they come here or we go on the road, I want coaches and other teams to be like, ‘Ugh, we have to play Indiana.’ That kind of feeling.”

Follow IndyStar reporter Zach Osterman on Twitter: @ZachOsterman.

This article originally appeared on Indianapolis Star: Indiana women's soccer defy predictions in 2023, dream big for 2024