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For a third straight season and the 16th time in head coach Jen Rockwood's 20 seasons as head coach, the BYU women's soccer team is bound for the NCAA tournament.
The West Coast Conference-champion Cougars on Monday were drawn into a region with 2 seed North Carolina, and will open tourney play on Saturday at Colorado--the team which knocked BYU out of last season's NCAA tournament in the second round.
"I'm really excited about it," said Rockwood of her team's automatic bid and upcoming trip to Boulder. "You work all year to get to this point, and the girls had a great season. I'm anxious to go to Colorado; they're a good team."
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BYU finished the regular season with a record of 13-4-3 (7-1-1 in conference play), recovering from a 1-3-2 start with a 13-match undefeated streak that ended with a 3-2 loss at nationally-ranked Pepperdine this past Saturday. Pepperdine made the 64-team tournament field as an at-large entrant, as did fellow WCC program San Diego.
Colorado finished with an overall record of 13-6-1, and ended Pac-12 play in 3rd place after a 6-4-1 conference campaign. Colorado played four opponents common to CU and BYU this season; the Buffaloes went defeated USF, Oregon and Utah, and lost to Washington State, while BYU defeated USF and Oregon, lost to Utah and drew with Washington State.
"We did what we needed to do in conference play to secure a spot," Rockwood said on Monday after the tournament selection show, "now we'll just move forward."
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Last season's NCAA tournament meeting with Colorado ended with the Buffs advancing on a 2-1 scoreline. CU opened the scoring off a corner-kick scramble that BYU failed to clear, and doubled the lead on a ball that wasn't cleanly handled by the keeper. BYU drew one back in the second half, but the comeback ended a goal short in Tallahassee.
"It comes down to some unfortunate goals; it was a tough break," says senior defender Annie Amos. "We thought that we were going to walk away with the 'W.' To not play your best when you know that you can play better was disappointing.
"We didn't play our best (against Colorado) last season, so obviously we want to come out this time and just absolutely kill them."
"I'm pretty excited for the rematch," said BYU's leading scorer Ashley Hatch. "It's a little bitter, knowing that they took us out of the tournament last year. It's going to be a good game."
BYU is 12-12-5 (2-3 in five matches decided by PKs) in 15 previous NCAA tournament appearances; the Cougars have faced Colorado twice, winning in the first round of the 2003 tourney before falling to the Buffs in the 2014 event.
"Obviously, anybody beats you, want a chance to get back at them," Rockwood says. "We played pretty well (against Colorado) last year, and came up short. I know our returning players are going to be very anxious to have another opportunity to play them."
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The matchday forecast calls for temperatures in the low 30s and a chance of snow on Saturday in Boulder.
"We've been very fortunate this year to have a nice warm fall, and haven't had to play in the cold yet," said Rockwood, "but these girls are used to playing and training in the cold. We've got a lot of Utah kids on the team, so it's not going to be a huge surprise to any of them. It will be colder than it has been so far, but we'll be ready for it."
Should BYU survive Colorado--and the conditions--on Saturday, a likely second-round meeting with perennial power North Carolina would be on the tap the following week. The reward of such a high-profile meeting serves as its own kind of incentive as tournament play gets underway.
"You have to get by a very good Colorado team to do that," said Rockwood, "but no one is going to dismiss the opportunity that's ahead of us, if we do win, to go out to North Carolina. That would be a lot of fun for us, but we'll take it one game at a time."
"That would be awesome," said Hatch of a possible meeting with the Tar Heels in Chapel Hill. "We would love the challenge. We want to get ourselves there."
Saturday's match at Colorado will kick at 1:00 p.m. MST.
