Keener, the only field player to play every minute of every game before Saturday, left the game in the first half after getting his left eyebrow sliced open. He returned later, but had to get subbed out again after more blood spilled out of the open wound.

His third return to the field is something that no one will forget.

On a corner by senior defender Ryan Thelen in the 76th minute, Keener used his heavily bandaged head to put the Spartans up 2-0 on a header.

“The timing of it, that it happened to be that one, it was pretty crazy,” Keener said. “I asked our trainer what will happen if the ball hits my head and he said it might explode. Thelen played a great ball in there. The ball went up and I thought ‘That’s it.’”

He left the game for good after his cut broke open yet again.

He was in high spirits after the game and said he’d be ready to go for the Spartans next game in Chicago on Tuesday, and it’s that kind of determination that head coach Damon Rensing said makes Keener an asset to the squad.

“That’s Keener,” Rensing said. “He’s a warrior out there and he worries about putting the team first and putting his body on the line. I would expect nothing less from him and that’s a tribute to him.”

While Keener’s toughness was the story of the game, it wasn’t the only acton.

After a disappointing first half that saw the Huskies put a lot of pressure on sophomore goalkeeper Zach Bennett, MSU came out with a renewed sense of attacking.

Sophomore midfielder Jay Chapman opened the scoring for the Spartans in the 71st minute when a corner from sophomore midfielder Sean Conerty deflected off junior midfielder Fatai Alashe before the finish from Chapman.

“The first half wasn’t good from our standpoint and we pushed it up and got some corners and some set pieces and stuff like that,” Chapman said. “It was up in the box, it came to me and I headed it down and fortunately I got it in the back of the net.”

It was the fifth shutout for Bennett, the back-to-back Big Ten Defensive Player of the Week, and first win against NIU in program history.

For the fourth straight game, the Spartans were without senior defender Kevin Cope, and the loss of Keener for much of the game added to the importance of the win.

Redshirt freshman defender Jerome Cristobal stepped in for Keener after the head injury, and Alashe played yet another solid game on the back line in the place of Cope.

“It’s so true that there’s no such thing as an easy college soccer game and today we learned that right from the start,” Keener said. “Not many teams can lose their two starting center backs and score a goal and be alight. Thats’s huge for our team and everyone that stepped up. The character of our team showed today.”