Whenever a sports program has a successful year, professional or collegiate, the next year is crucial.

If a team continues its success or has a bad year, proving that the previous season was a fluke, it’s sometimes known as the hangover affect.

NIU men’s soccer had one of its best years last season, going 15-6-0, winning the MAC conference championship and earning an automatic bid into the NCAA tournament, where it made it to the second round.

This season will be one that can either solidify the men’s soccer program here at NIU or prove last season was a fluke. The mindset of head coach Eric Luzzi, however, is a little different.

“This season we wipe the slate clean,” Luzzi said. “The only thing that we keep is that the bid to the tournament is now an automatic goal. Our returning players didn’t come into camp as fit as we would like but overall the mind-set is good.”

A positive for the Huskies is they return several players with multiple goals from last year, including junior James Stevenson (6), junior Gael Rivera (4) and sophomore Paul Hogan (3).

Another positive for the Huskies this season is their recruiting class, which features eight freshmen, which has been named one of the top recruiting classes in the nation.

Senior goalkeeper Jordan Godsey was a big part of the Huskies’ big year in 2011 and has taken his coaches’s mentality into this year.

“Our mindset was we really didn’t look at last year, a new year, a new team,” Godsey said. “We wanted to be mostly confident playing in our playing style cause we started it last year, so now we want to get more comfortable.”

Godsey is looking to take that mindset and use it as an example for the incoming freshmen to give them something to look up to.

“Coming in everyday playing hard, I’m really competitive,” Godsey said. “So coming in with that everyday is something that they can feed off of.”

NIU looks to bounce back from its first loss of the season as they play this Friday at UW Green Bay in Green Bay, Wis.