His team clinched the regular-season Mid-American Conference title last weekend, but Ohio coach Neil Macmillan still expects his team to give its best in its final regular-season game at Central Michigan today.
“We want to keep the high level of play we had against Missouri State,” said Macmillan, whose team trounced the Bears 6-0 Sunday.
The No. 15 Bobcats (14-4, 8-1 MAC) aren’t the first ranked team to roll into the Central Michigan University Field Hockey Complex this season. The Chippewas have played three ranked teams at home, upsetting No. 5 Michigan State Sept. 26 and taking No. 4 Michigan into overtime before losing Oct. 17. They also lost to No. 3 Iowa Sept. 23.
The Chippewas make the most of home field advantage, Macmillan said.
“Central Michigan always plays very well at home,” he said. “We go into that knowing they’re looking to knock off or at least be very competitive with another ranked team.”
“We’re going to have our work cut out,” he added. “It’s not going to be ‘walk in there, get the win, walk home’ or even a game we don’t care about.”
Macmillan added he hopes a victory over the Chippewas on the road will boost Ohio’s profile for the NCAA Selection Committee come tournament time.
The Bobcats handled Central Michigan comfortably in the teams’ first meeting, winning 4-0 at Peggy Pruitt Field Oct. 5. His team played a solid game the first time around, but playing on the Chippewa field could provide new challenges, Macmillan said.
“We played fairly well,” he said. “We certainly want to clean a few things up in terms of attack. Their field plays a lot differently than ours, so we’d be looking rather than adapting from last time to adapting to their field.”
Because of Ohio’s offensive explosion last weekend, several bench players played significant minutes against Missouri State. Taylor Anderson scored the first goal of her career, and Patty Donahue notched her first score of the season and the second of her career in the second half to pad the Bobcat lead.
It’s always the intention to rotate bench players in as much as possible, Macmillan said, and it would be nice to do the same against Central Michigan (5-11, 4-4 MAC).
“The style I like to play is rotating people in and out,” he said. “We’ve had the opportunity to do that with our forwards a lot this year.”
“It’s something I would really like to work to as a squad. We’re not quite there to sub all the way down the field right now, but hopefully this type of game gives us that opportunity.”
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