M-Soccer: SMU vs. Tulsa (C-USA Championship)

[DanFreibergerForHeisman]

No. 20 SMU will face Tulsa in the C-USA Championship match Sunday at 1pm. The game will be televised on the CBS Sports Network.

Earlier this season, SMU defeated Tulsa 1-0 at Westcott Field.

The Mustangs will be looking for the double, having already won the C-USA regular season title. Tulsa finished in second place during the regular season.

Both teams will certainly be selected for the NCAA Tournament, but this game could very well be for a seed and a bye to the second round.

Go Ponies!

[DanFreibergerForHeisman]

No Engel or Rosales in the starting lineup today...

Ibarra; Lee, King, Simmons, Ponce; Nelson, Morales, Lujano, Puskarich; Smith, Castillo

[DanFreibergerForHeisman]

SMU-Tulsa is underway.

[DanFreibergerForHeisman]

Tulsa up 1-0 with a goal right at 20 minutes.

[DanFreibergerForHeisman]

Not a pretty half for SMU at all - Tulsa up 3-0 at the break.

[Treadway21]

That is disappointing.

[DanFreibergerForHeisman]

5-0 at the second half break.

This one is seriously unbelievable. SMU has been pressing people forward for a good part of the second, but Tulsa has been able to strike on the counter twice now.

[mustangpride101]

whats the score now what minute?

[mustangpride101]

5-0 at the second half break.

This one is seriously unbelievable. SMU has been pressing people forward for a good part of the second, but Tulsa has been able to strike on the counter twice now.

whats the score now what minute?

[DanFreibergerForHeisman]

5-0 with 4 minutes left.

[mustangpride101]

Well at least they will get into the NCAA tourny, this is very upsetting though, they beat them in the regular season, and now we get destroyed when it counts in the conference finals...what happened?

[DanFreibergerForHeisman]

5-0 final.

SMU just couldn't generate anything offensively today. Hopefully a result like this will get the team grounded and focused for a hard week of work getting ready for the NCAA Tournament.

[DanFreibergerForHeisman]

T.J. Nelson, Juan Castillo, and Andrew Morales were named to the C-USA All-Tournament team:

Mark Pais, Tulsa
Jake Dobkins, Tulsa
Tony Rocha, Tulsa
Akeil Barrett, Tulsa
Andrew Morales, SMU
Juan Castillo, SMU
T.J. Nelson, SMU
Steven Perinovic, Kentucky
Cameron Wilder, Kentucky
Raphael Ville, UAB
Chase Wickham, UAB

The NCAA bracket will be announced at 4:30 this afternoon. SMU should be hosting a first round game.

[Treadway21]

Dan, did you watch the game? What happened. That is a scary result going into the playoffs. Could it bump is out?

[DanFreibergerForHeisman]

Dan, did you watch the game? What happened. That is a scary result going into the playoffs. Could it bump is out?

A result like this will either totally shake the confidence of the team or bring them together to work harder - I guess we will find out next weekend.

We are safely in the tournament - our RPI rank this morning is 28. The bubble on the men's side is in the 40s. Tulsa is obviously in with the automatic bid, but SMU, Kentucky, and UAB should also all be in with no problem.

The Big East game went to 2OT, so they didn't join our game until around the 20th minute. Tulsa got the early goal, but before that, we apparently hit a post and then the Tulsa keeper was able to make a reflex save on a rebound shot. Who knows how things would have gone if we got the early goal instead.

Tulsa got their second, and then got a third on a breakaway inside the final minute of the first which was an absolute killer and pretty much sealed things.

SMU's weakness this season of not being able to generate a lot of scoring chances reared its ugly head at the most inopportune time. We have been able to compensate by being opportunistic on our few chances and by being extremely solid at the back, but Tulsa was just better yesterday. Their first two goals were really nice and they didn't give us any chances whatsoever.

The second half degenerated obviously with SMU throwing people forward. We were playing three at the back and had Aaron Simmons up front for a good part of the second half. We are actually fortunate it was only 5. It easily could have been 8 or 9 with Tulsa missing a wide open net a few times on breakaways where their player was 1v1 with Ibarra.

The one concerning thing was seeing Tulsa be able to break down our defense while the game was still competitive, which is something we haven't seen much this season. Hopefully, it was just one of those days...