CMU plays Missouri State in first round of MAC tournament
Ending the season with a 3-1 victory over Ball State was enough to move Central Michigan to the fourth spot in the Mid-American Conference heading into the conference tournament.
CMU (5-13, 3-7) will play host to the MAC tournament starting with games Thursday and Friday before the championship game Saturday.
In the first round, CMU will play the fifth seed Missouri State, in an attempt to break a 1-1 season series. The team opens the tournament at 11 a.m. Thursday at the CMU Field Hockey Complex.
“Missouri State is a very good offensive team,” said head coach Cristy Freese. “They’ve been putting the ball in the net and I think we need to come out and play as strong as we did this weekend against Ball State.”
In the first meeting, played on Oct. 16, the Chippewas beat Missouri State 4-2 with the help of a two-goal performance by sophomore Erin Dye. Freshman Juliana Makrinos and senior Amanda von Leer each added two assists.
In the second contest on Oct. 17, Amanda Miyashita scored the lone goal in a 1-0 MSU victory. “A pro to playing (Missouri State) a third time is knowing how they play and what to expect,” said senior Kim Sihota, “But at the same time they know how we play and they’ve developed strategies to play differently against us.”
The team will still be without junior Brooke Sihota, who broke her finger the last time the two teams met.
Junior Paulina Lee’s status for the tournament opener is questionable after suffering a sprained ankle on top of a recently repaired broken finger.
“Brooke is done, and Paulina sprained her ankle (Sunday),” Freese said. “If she plays, it will be limited.”
The injury bug has been an issue for the team, on top of the lack of practice time. Coming off of games Saturday and Sunday, the team had a day off and will have fewer practices than usual before opening the tournament on Thursday.
“We’ve got a good practice (Tuesday) and a shortened one Wednesday, but at this point in the season it’s not a bad thing to not have too much practice time,” Freese said.
Intensity increases as it would in any postseason games, though Kim said it was an opportunity to start fresh.
“We can start brand new now and forget about the season,” she said. “We need to just go out and have as much fun as we can while playing the best game we can.”
With a win against Missouri State Thursday, the team would move on to play No. 1 seed Kent State, though Freese doesn’t want the team to get ahead of itself.
“All my talk is about Thursday and all our videos are about Thursday, because like I tell our team, we’re only guaranteed one game,” Freese said.
CMU made it out of the opening round and lost in the semifinals the past three seasons.
The winner of the tournament will advance to a play-in game for the NCAA Tournament on Nov. 9.
