Oct. 31, 2011
Northwestern Big Ten Player of the Week Honorees for 2011:
Sept. 5 – Tyler Miller – Big Ten Defensive Player of the Week
Sept. 19 – Chris Ritter – Big Ten Offensive Player of the Week
Oct. 10 – Oliver Kupe – Big Ten Offensive Player of the Week
Oct. 17 – Nikko Boxall – Big Ten Co-Defensive Player of the Week
Oct. 24 – Nick Gendron – Big Ten Offensive Player of the Week
Tyler Miller – Big Ten Co-Defensive Player of the Week
Oct. 31 – Oliver Kupe – Big Ten Offensive Player of the Week
EVANSTON, Ill. – Senior Oliver Kupe (Clarkston, Mich./Clarkston) had a huge day in his final regular season match at Lakeside Field Sunday and was honored with the Big Ten Offensive Player of the Week award Monday.
Kupe played a part in two Northwestern goals as the Wildcats came back to tie No. 10 Indiana 2-2 in double overtime. He assisted on his first goal of the season as he set up Lepe Seetane's (Maseru, Lesotho/Trinity) goal in the 37th minute to put Northwestern up 1-0.
With the game winding down and NU trailing 2-1, Kupe stepped up once again, scoring his team-leading seventh goal of the season at the 84:54 mark to tie the match at 2-2. Kupe and the rest of the Wildcats held off Indiana in extra time and escaped with the 2-2 comeback.
With the tie, Northwestern is still unbeaten in Big Ten play (3-0-2) and is now unbeaten in its last eight matches (6-0-2).
This is the second career honor for Kupe as his first POW award came on Oct. 10 for his performance at then-No. 12 Notre Dame and Ohio State. This is the fourth week in a row that the Wildcats have taken home a player-of-the-week honor. The last time any Big Ten team achieved four-straight POW honors came in 2008 when Northwestern took home the award Sept. 8-29 (Mark Blades, Matt Eliason, Misha Rosenthal twice).
This week's award also marks a school-record seventh weekly honor for Northwestern this season.
Northwestern is in its final week of the regular season and has a key Big Ten match Saturday in Ann Arbor. The Wildcats take on Michigan at 4 p.m. and are still in the hunt for a regular season Big Ten title and No. 1 seed at the Big Ten Tournament. NU is currently second in the conference standings with 11 points (3-0-2), trailing first-place Ohio State by one point (4-1-0, 12 points).
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