After a 1-0 loss on Oct. 12 at Minnesota, it was the Fighting Illini soccer team, and not the Golden Gophers, that became roadkill. The game dashed any hopes Illinois had left of winning the Big Ten – a preseason aspiration – and was a microcosm of the road struggles that plagued the Illini all season.

Illinois went just 2-8-1 in true road games this season, and the struggles can be traced directly to its inability to put the ball in the back of the net. After a 2007 season in which the Illini scored 15 goals in 10 road contests, they managed just a paltry five goals in 11 road games in 2008.

“It’s frustrating,” head coach Janet Rayfield said after a 1-0 loss at Indiana on Oct. 19 that marked the Illini’s fourth-straight shutout loss on the road. “Sickening would almost be the feeling I would ascribe to it. On the road or at home, we got to start winning games.”

After opening the season with a road win at Missouri, Illinois endured a stretch in which it lost seven of eight on the road – each loss a shutout. The most frustrating of those were consecutive 1-0 losses at Iowa, Minnesota and Indiana, games the Illini controlled at times.

The Illini never seemed to get fully comfortable on the road, for any number of reasons – no crowd support, a lack of concentration, different types of playing surfaces, pressing too hard and even bad luck. But the Illini admitted they simply did not get the job done.

“You don’t win Big Ten games on the road without capitalizing on the (offensive) chances you get,” Rayfield said after the Minnesota loss. “We got to solve that.”

Illinois offset its poor road record by going 8-1 at home. That was just enough to sneak into the NCAA Tournament, where the Illini did get the job done on the road in their biggest game of the year.

In a rematch against the host Missouri Tigers in the second round, Illinois tallied a road goal and then won in penalty kicks.

While the road record was an unwanted change that Illinois battled all season, the NCAA Tournament performance was a sign of consistency. It marked the third time in five years Illinois had advanced to the Round of 16 and was the program’s sixth consecutive NCAA Tournament berth.