“It was a great memory,” Rutz said. “I just got a good opportunity to score.”

Now, the 2013 edition of the Spartans (5-1-1 overall) is heading to Chicago to take on the Flames (6-2-0 overall) at 8 p.m. on Tuesday.

“We’re staying humble and working hard and not getting ahead of ourselves,” Rutz said. “We’re going to worry about ourselves, and if we stay together as a team, we’ll do fine.”

The Flames are hot, having won six straight games, the last five being shutouts for freshman goalkeeper Andrew Putna.

Head coach Damon Rensing said the key to breaking down the staunch UIC defense will be patience, and the Flames have corrected some issues from earlier in the season.

“It will be a bit of a defensive struggle,” Rensing said. “You’ve got to take chances. Every goal doesn’t have to be pretty, and sometimes you get one and the second one comes a little bit easier.”

UIC’s style is to slow down and play a defensive, low pressure game. Their shutout percentage of .63 is good for ninth in the country.

Junior forward Tim Kreutz said the team has already played a few teams that play the low pressure style to much success, but the only loss of the season, a 2-1 result to Valparaiso on Sept. 8, is what they can learn from the most.

“We’ve faced that a couple time this year, and were successful against it, but against Valpo we weren’t successful against it,” Kreutz said. “We watched the Valpo game and found out what we could do to beat systems like UIC’s.”

With a matchup against Northwestern in the Big Ten regular season opener on the horizon, this is a game that MSU can’t afford to look past.

Kreutz said the team wants to build a winning streak and get a good rhythm going heading into Big Ten play.

“Every team we’ve played this year that isn’t in the Big Ten has Big Ten caliber players, so we’re trying to focus on them as a team,” he said. “Yeah, we want to start the Big Ten off with a win, but we want to start this week off with a win against UIC first. They’re playing pretty well, so we want to keep up our play before we go into the Big Ten regular season.”

With three straight games against Illinois-based teams, Kreutz, an Illinois native himself, said he roots for Illinois teams, but wants to represent Michigan as a state for soccer and go in and win all the games.

Rensing didn’t say whether Rutz would have the chance to continue his scoring streak against UIC, but he said there’s always a chance.

“There’re definitely teams that every player has comforts with,” Rensing said. “I don’t know if that’s Rutz or not, but hopefully.”