Central Michigan University Athletics
CMU Kicks Off MAC Tourney at Buffalo
10/31/2015 12:00:00 AM | Soccer
Andy Sneddon, CMUChippewas.com
MOUNT PLEASANT, Mich. - Something to prove, everything to gain.
The Central Michigan soccer team will play at Buffalo Sunday (1 p.m.) in a Mid-American Conference Tournament quarterfinal match. The winner advaces to the tournament final four next weekend. The loser's season is over.
The Chippewas are 6-10-2 overall and finished 5-5-1 in the MAC. They are seeded sixth in the tournament. Third-seeded Buffalo, 11-6-2, 7-3-1, is the MAC East champion and last year won both the MAC regular-season and tournament titles and reached the NCAA Tournament.
CMU fell at Buffalo, 3-0, two weeks ago. The Chippewas lost three of their final four regular-season games.
"I think we are a better team than that," CMU coach Peter McGahey said Friday after the Chippewas dropped their regular-season finale at home to Toledo, 2-0. "We have an opportunity to go back to play a team that we're familiar with, so you should be motivated and hungry to respond and perform better than what you did two weeks ago. All of that is the intrinsic motivation that the players and staff will carry in."
Buffalo won five of its last six regular-season matches. The lone loss in that stretch came at Ball State, 1-0, in overtime. The Cardinals are the overall regular-season champions and the No. 1 seed in the tournament.
A key for the Chippewas, McGahey said, is generating offense. CMU went through a stretch where shots came in bunches - along with good results. They finished with just six on Sunday against Toledo.
"You're going to have to find a way to connect passes in the attacking half and find ways to generate crosses," McGahey said. "When we do that we're quite a good team and we can create chances, but sometimes that has proved more challenging than you would like.
"Soccer-wise, when we're on and doing the things that we do, we're a handful. We can score on set pieces, we can score in the run of play, we can score off of our press. Those things travel in the playoffs.
"The thing that is the magical ball that has to be found is that confidence defensively to defend in our own half and in front of our own goal with the fortitude that we had a couple of weeks ago. You can find that really fast in this game, and if you can interject that, good things are possible."
