Chippewas Home Friday for MAC Showdown
10/9/2014 12:00:00 AM | Field Hockey
Andy Sneddon, CMUChippewas.com
MOUNT PLEASANT, Mich. - With just six regular-season games on the Mid-American Conference field hockey schedule, the importance of each one is magnified.
Particularly when the league's only two unbeatens square off.
Such is the case Friday when Central Michigan plays host to Miami in a league game at the CMU Field Hockey Complex (3 p.m.).
Both teams are 2-0 in the conference and share first place. The winner takes sole possession of the league lead with three games to play before the conference tournament.
No question it's a big game, CMU coach Cristy Freese said, but no bigger than any other MAC contest.
"I want to make sure that we understand it's just one game," said Freese, whose team is coming off back-to-back MAC victories over Ball State and Longwood. "It's just as big as the Ball State game was, and it's just as big as our game with Longwood was. It's not bigger than that.
"After we beat Ball State, I said we really needed to start 1-0. And after we beat Longwood it was like, we needed to be 2-0. If you're going for a MAC championship, you need the game in front of you."
The Chippewas (3-8 overall) are coming off a dramatic 4-3 overtime victory Sunday at home over Longwood. CMU rallied from 2-0 and 3-1 deficits in that contest, scoring twice in the final eight minutes of regulation time to force the extra session.
CMU lost to Miami last year in the MAC Tournament championship game. That result is in the rearview mirror, as are the wins over Ball State and Longwood, Freese said.
"We can't approach Friday any different," she said. "Yes, we played them last year in the finals of the MAC Tournament - this is not the finals of the MAC Tournament. That was last year and we had that opportunity a year ago.
"Our focus with our kids right now is still to correct things that will make us a consistently better team."
The Chippewas started the season 1-8, scoring just eight goals in their first nine games against a brutally tough schedule that included matchups with the likes of Stanford, Duke and Michigan. The Cardinal is currently ranked ninth, Duke is 11th, and U-M is 14th.
Clearly, that rugged schedule is paying dividends now, just as Freese had hoped it would. Their 2-0 win over Ball State was their first shutout of the season, and the four goals they scored against Longwood was their best offensive output of the year.
"A goal gets scored on you, you can't magnify that goal and think it's any worse than one goal," Freese said. "I think that what our team was able to do through that non-conference schedule, it was, `OK, settle down, take it a step at a time.'
"And we've seen that benefit in our two conference games, especially on Sunday (against Longwood) when we were down 2-0 and we were down 3-1. Our players really stayed focused and just tried to get the next goal and that's where our mentality is now."
Miami (4-8) has won MAC games against Longwood, 3-1, and Ohio, 2-0. Like the Chippewas, the RedHawks played a difficult non-conference slate that included six ranked teams: North Carolina, Syracuse, Northwestern, Maryland, Virginia and Indiana.
North Carolina is currently ranked No. 1, Maryland is No. 2, Northwestern is No. 4, Virginia is eighth, and Indiana is 23rd.
Northwestern (9-3) plays at CMU Sunday at noon.