As the NCAA field hockey championship bracket was unveiled Tuesday, head coach Ange Bradley was thankful she had a good friend to help combat the nerves, a friend that had been through this kind of thing before.

Sitting in a booth at the Inn Complete with women’s basketball head coach Quentin Hillsman, Bradley played out every possible scenario in her head. Hillsman relayed lessons he’d learned from the last selection show he’d gone through – a show that saw his team as one of the last announced.

‘I was like ‘Oh my God, Q, my heart, my heart,” Bradley said. ‘He was like, ‘I know, I know just relax, relax.’ So we were kind of going back and forth – he was a good calming factor for me.’

Bradley had little to worry about, as the No. 3 Orange (20-1) received a three-seed in the field of 16 teams, and the luxury of hosting up to two games at home. Syracuse will host Massachusetts (17-4) at 11:30 a.m. Saturday at J.S. Coyne Stadium. The Minutewomen clinched an NCAA berth by defeating Kent State 1-0 in a playoff game Tuesday.

Syracuse will face a familiar opponent. The Orange traveled to UMass Sept. 28 and emerged with a 5-4 win.

After the tournament draw, the players – sitting shoulder-to-shoulder with their eyes glued to the big-screen TV – jumped out of their seats screaming in celebration. The rest of the coaching staff, however, was already busy analyzing the bracket.

Despite having the best record in the NCAA, the Orange was seeded lower than a pair of Atlantic Coast Conference teams: No.1 Maryland and No. 2 Wake Forest.

Still, Bradley said she felt good about the draw.

‘It’s a little comforting to play a team you’ve played before,’ Bradley said. ‘You have tape on each other, and you can figure out what changes you need to make. If you haven’t played the team before, you have a little more anxiety.’

After the narrow victory against UMass earlier this year, Bradley called the win ‘the team’s first loss.’ The Orange players are eager to prove how far they’ve come since that narrow win.

‘I just thought it was real exciting we get to play them again,’ sophomore back Maggie Befort said. ‘It was a really physical game. They challenged us (last time), but I think it’ll be a great mental challenge for us to say, ‘You don’t belong with us, we’re kicking your (butt).”

If Syracuse makes it through the opening round, it will face a competitive remaining bracket, anchored by the second-seeded Demon Deacons. A win Saturday guarantees the Orange a date with the winner of Princeton and Penn State.

‘I think it’s a good bracket,’ senior midfielder Shannon Taylor said. ‘The Princeton-Penn State game is going to be awesome. I like being able to play teams we haven’t seen before, teams we’re not used to seeing.’

Bradley said winning a national championship is obviously the goal, but seeing how far the team has come is a special feeling in itself for the second-year coach.

‘If I really think about it, I’ll get emotional and start to get teary-eyed,’ she said. ‘It’s just really neat to see the reward of hard work, and to see how these kids have worked so incredibly hard to see their dreams come to life – there’s nothing better than that. It’s really a very powerful feeling as a coach to watch kids do something they didn’t think they could.’

ctorr@syr.edu

Published on November 11, 2008 at 12:00 pm