With only two games left on its schedule, the Massachusetts women’s soccer team faces a tough task in trying to reach the Atlantic 10 Tournament, beginning with a game on the road at Richmond on Sunday.
Heading into this Sunday’s game, the Minutewomen (6-8-2, 2-3-1 A-10) are tied for eighth place in the conference standings with George Washington. In order to make the conference tournament, they will need to jump to sixth place.
UMass coach Ed Matz stressed the importance of his team needing a win against the Spiders (5-7-2, 2-2 A-10).
“Basically what’s going on through my mind is that we have to win these last two games,” Matz said on how the team will make the tournament. “I don’t see any other possibility of getting into the playoffs without winning these last two games.”
Despite Matz’s confidence in his team, the one concern that UMass has is in factors it can’t control. The other teams that it is tied with or trailing in the standings all have more than two games remaining.
“We’re tied for eighth, but some of these other teams tied with us have four games left and we only have two,” Matz said. “I think we will finish in the five or six seed if we win our last two games.”
With exception to the little hiccup the team had recently – a double overtime loss at Fordham, which dropped UMass from fourth to eighth in the standings – Matz thinks his team has been playing well.
“Taking last Sunday’s game away from how we’ve played in the last month, I think we’ve played pretty well,” Matz said on what he expects from his team for the Richmond game. “We’ve played some good teams and we had a brutal schedule as far where our travel has been, especially this weekend.”
Throughout much of the season, UMass has struggled to convert goals on numerous opportunities. The inability to score forced the team to rely heavily on the defense to keep the score close in the hopes of winning games. While the defense has done exactly that, the offense has only recently started to click.
Senior forward Brittany Moore has found a groove that’s helped her score five goals in the previous two games. Even with this sudden offensive burst, Matz doesn’t expect the team to rely on only her to score in these final two games.
“We don’t rely on anyone, it’s not how we are designed,” he said. “We want Brit (Moore) to score, but I’m sure that teams are going to look at our scouting report and when you scout UMass right now you’ll see that Brit Moore is scoring goals.”
Sunday’s game is scheduled to begin at 1 p.m. at Richmond.
Tom Mulherin can be reached at [email protected].
