STARKVILLE — There’s no place like home, and for Mississippi State soccer, the Bulldogs have embraced Starkville and the community has embraced them.
It showed last Friday when over 1,200 people turned out for MSU’s first-round NCAA tournament match against New Mexico State, an eventual 2-1 victory for the Bulldogs.
Prior to the match, head coach James Armstrong and the coaching staff talked with the players about how this would likely be their final match of the season at home and to embrace it.
A win wouldn’t have guaranteed them home-field advantage in the second round, needing a wild set of events for that to happen, but the team showed up and showed out for the community.
Now, the journey continues to Fayetteville, Arkansas, for a second-round tilt against Memphis.
“The number of fans who came out on Friday was phenomenal,” Armstrong said. “I was talking to one of the baseball coaches who said that he could hear the fans above the music at Dudy Noble, so that gives you an idea of how loud our fans were.”
“We were prepared to play at a neutral site, and that was one of the things that we talked to the girls about in our pregame speech.”
Mississippi State (12-5-4) dominated nearly all facets of Friday’s match against the Aggies, outshooting them 16-9, an 8-3 shots on goal difference and twice as many corners generated overall.
It took until the 88th minute for that breakthrough to come for the Bulldogs after NMSU equalized in the 74th minute, but their play was awarded, deservedly.
The attention has turned to Memphis, which upset the No. 2 seed in MSU’s quarter of the bracket, Saint Louis, with a 1-0 win on Saturday.
“It didn’t surprise any of us that Memphis were the eventual winners of last game,” Armstrong said. “They’re very similar to an SEC team, to be perfectly honest, in terms of their style. For us, we worked backwards. We took a look at our performance in the last game and just focused entirely on us.”
Part of that focus dealt with what are expected to be less-than-ideal conditions in Fayetteville on Friday, with temperature at kickoff to hover around 33 degrees and drop from there.
While not nearly as extreme, temperatures in Starkville over the past week have been in the 50s, with daily lows reaching below-freezing temperatures, even into the 20s, something that has helped significantly during training.
It’s not always the case that a team can simulate environments of future matches, but MSU has lucked out in that regard in preparation for the Tigers.
“Any time as a coach that you can try and replicate the conditions that you’re going to be playing in is always helpful,” Armstrong said. “The fact that straight after our victory on Friday night, the temperature on Saturday plummeted significantly, has been beneficial during practice.”
Memphis, the winner of the American Athletic Conference tournament, came into the NCAA tournament unseeded, but the Tigers have great depth on their roster.
Nine players this season have scored two or more goals and as a team, they’re scoring nearly two goals a game on average.
The Tigers can score, but they’re a team that has conceded quite a bit, allowing 1.2 goals per game this season.
Their prospects against Power 5 opponents haven’t been great, carrying a 1-3-1 record into Friday, with one common opponent between MSU and Memphis: Ole Miss.
Nothing is guaranteed, especially in the NCAA tournament, but an improvement on last Friday’s performance could be the difference in what will be a tightly contested match.
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