File photo by Ari Selvey New Ulm’s Levi Johnson takes the ball up the field during a Section 2AA Boys Soccer Tournament match against Mankato West Tuesday at New Ulm High School.

MINNETRISTA — When the Section 2AA Boys Soccer Tournament seedings came out, eyes were surely on who would claim the No. 2 seed between New Ulm and Westonka.

Both programs had just one loss in the section, with New Ulm holding a 6-1 record and Westonka going 4-1. Both schools also had strong seasons outside of the section, with Westonka putting up an 11-2-2 regular season overall and New Ulm going into the playoffs at 12-2-2. New Ulm’s loss was to Mankato East, who ended as the top seed in the section, and Westonka’s loss came against Mankato West, whom New Ulm defeated 3-1 in the regular season and again in extra time in its first playoff matchup on Tuesday. The teams also have nearly identical QRF ratings, with New Ulm at 66.5 and Westonka at 66.

But when the seedings came out, it was Westonka that earned the No. 2 seed, and as both the Eagles and the White Hawks won their opening matchups of the tournament, it will be New Ulm that will travel the hour-and-a-half to play in Minnetrista at 6 p.m. on Thursday.

“I’m expecting be an evenly-matched game, as long as our guys come to play,” New Ulm head coach Tim Plocher said. “And their guys come to play as well. We’re coming into this as the underdogs now, so we have to come out strong like West did against us. They had everything to fight for, and we had everything to lose, and they knew it, so they came out hard, and we need to make sure we come out strong to Mound Westonka as well.”

New Ulm has reversed its fortunes with the playoff win over Mankato West, as it snapped a four-game winless streak with the extra time thriller. After winning its first 12 games of the season, New Ulm fell 2-1 to Tri-City United, then drew matches against St. Peter and Orono. Finally a 4-2 loss to Mankato East ended the regular season.

“Our passing was kind of the key to everything,” Plocher said. “I think we have the best ball movement, and it was kind of portrayed when we scored that goal in that second overtime. I went back and watched film of it, and it was like perfect pass, pass, pass, one-touch movement, pass, pass, cross, goal. It was absolutely perfect. That’s how it should have been all year, and that’s how it was the first 12 games really.”

But New Ulm got out of that habit down the stretch, relying on speedy strikers like Levi Johnson and Jackson Ocampo to do the work.

“We got into this false sense of, ‘Oh we can just kick it to our forwards and they can just score,'” Plocher said. “So instead of just doing the work in the midfield — Austin [Krohn, New Ulm goalkeeper] has a cannon of a kick … their defense was playing so high, he gets the ball, he punts it, then Jackson or Levi goes down and scores because they don’t expect him to be able to kick it three-fourths of the field. And then once that happened, it was, ‘Oh we’re just going to keep doing that.’ Then we lose the ball control and there’s too much sprinting down and back and the forwards don’t drop on defense and the transition period isn’t there.”

But unlike last season, where the Eagles were unable to pull out of a losing skid, going one and done in the playoffs, New Ulm was able to size some early-season magic in the game against Mankato West, getting back to the defensive excellence it showed with Methodious Amoah sealing the 1-0 shutout in the second extra time period.

Westonka likes to play with an extra defender back, making it difficult on opposing offenses to out-speed them. Luckily for New Ulm, that’s exactly what the focus is on avoiding doing too much.

“They like keeping an extra defender in the back line, which would make it a little harder to get the ball, especially through balls I think they play very well against,” Plocher said. “Which I think works in our favor because again, we do best when we have that ball control and work it up the field instead of just kicking it through the line. Another thing they have is a couple of bigger players that are their targets for their throw-ins and corner kicks, so we have to make sure we shut those two players down.”

Plocher said he’s looking for his team to be focused in the matchup.

“The biggest thing is to make sure we’re locked into the game,” he said. “Make sure our heads are where they’re supposed to be, make sure we’re not attacking each other, make sure we’re being constructive with any criticisms we give or any instructions we give to not put our teammates down, but to build them up.”

Plocher expects his team to win the game and says communication between the defense and midfield will be key.

“I’m expecting a win just naturally as a coach,” he said. “And if we are to win, it’s really going to come down to how much in-sync the defense and midfield are. So it’s not just one guy covering one midfielder and we’re leaving him to dribble around, we have to make sure we have another defender or midfielder on the guy to make sure he doesn’t have free passes or free dribbles running around. That’s kind of what killed us against Mankato East.”