After three games against Mid-American Conference opponents, the Ohio field hockey squad has yet to allow any conference team to win a game or score a single goal against it.
I don't think we really realized it until they made a big deal out of it online this week
goalkeeper Jessie Martin said. I was like 'Wow we really haven't been scored on.' But that just means that teams are going to be coming for us this weekend
and we have to be extra ready.
The Bobcats outscored Ball State, Miami and Missouri State by a combined score of 6-0, with three of its goals coming from standout forward Estienne Coetzee.
We've never started off the MAC season with zero goals against us like this
forward Celine McNamara said. That's going to be good for us in the standings at the end of the season.
Ohio (6-5, 3-0 MAC) is the only remaining team with an unblemished MAC record, and also the only MAC team to be listed in the STX/NFHCA poll, having received 20 votes in this week's poll. A recent poll on FieldHockeyCorner.com ranked the Bobcats ninth in the country in strength of schedule.
That's probably about right
coach Neil Macmillan said. Teams in the (Atlantic Coast Conference) or Big Ten
they look for balance in their schedules.
For us, it's the other way around. We don't have a huge amount of strength in our conference, so we've got to front load (our schedule) with big teams.
Ohio's next two opponents ' Central Michigan and Kent State ' have just one conference win between them.That means the Bobcats are in great position to go on a run this weekend.
I think this is a good opportunity to finish off the first half of MAC play, McNamara said. Central Michigan won the MAC Tournament last year, so this is a good opportunity to knock them down.
Although the three shutouts were encouraging
Macmillan said the team needs to forget them because the Chippewas' turf can be a little tricky and the Golden Flashes have been very inconsistent.
You don't know which (Kent) team is going to show up, so you've got to be ready for the best of them, he added.
Martin
however
has been very consistent for the Bobcats
anchoring the defense with 11 saves in MAC play and holding Ohio's leads in several close games.
It's best to just play it situation by situation, she said. We play seventy one-minute games. You've got to win every minute of the seventy minutes.
If you think about it like that
