After taking home both regular season and SEC tournament titles, No. 3 Texas A&M will look to claim the Women’s College Cup as it enters the NCAA Tournament a 1-seed. The Aggies host Houston Baptist at 7 p.m. Friday in the first round of tournament play at Ellis Field.
The Aggies (18-2-2) finished the season with a 9-0-1 record in their final 10 games, including a 3-0 run in the SEC tournament that saw A&M shut out all three of its opponents.
Similarly, Houston Baptist (10-6-5) comes into the matchup riding a 9-0-1 run in their final stretch of the season. A&M is no stranger to facing streaking teams, however, as it downed a Kentucky squad in the SEC tournament championship that had eight consecutive victories before facing the Aggies. A&M head coach G Guerreri is as confident about the match on Friday as he was for Kentucky.
“The fact is we are hotter than both of them,” Guerreri said. “How do they deal with us? That’s the way we look at it. Our best defense is our attack. We feel like if we have the ball then the other team can’t score and get into their game. The fact that we went through the SEC tournament and gave up no goals is as much about our defending, but more about what we do all over the field.”
The three shutouts in the tournament were registered by senior goalkeeper Jordan Day, who has made just five starts but has given up .4 goals per game.
The Huskies earned their NCAA bid by winning the Southland Conference tournament championship. In the first two rounds, they took down their opponents in double overtime and blanked Stephen F. Austin 2-0 in the championship match.
As a 1-seed, A&M is granted homefield advantage until the semifinals. The Aggies could possibly run into a familiar foe along the way. If they make it to the third round, the Aggies could play the Texas Longhorns.
“The goal of the team is to win the national championship,” Guerreri said. “There are a lot of teams who say that and dream about that, but there are only a handful of teams who can actually do it. This team set this as their goal last January and then as we went through our offseason. The parts leading up to that they wanted to win the SEC regular season championship, and a lot of teams wanted to do that. They did, and then they wanted to repeat as champions of the tournament, and they did that. They wanted to go through this whole year with the idea that they’re going to earn a No. 1 seed in the NCAA tournament, because that would give them home field advantage. They were able to do that for the first time in our history. This is a team that when they put their minds to something, I feel pretty good about them meeting that goal.”