Championship Preview
men’s soccer to dance with devils

First it looked like it would be Johns Hopkins. Then Gettysburg was a possibility. But when the dust settled Saturday, the Muhlenberg men’s soccer team learned that it would have to play at Dickinson in the first round of the Centennial Conference playoffs.

The fifth-seeded Mules (12-5-1) will travel to Carlisle to take on the Red Devils (11-4-2) tomorrow at 4:00. The winner advances to face No. 11 Swarthmore (14-2-1) on Saturday afternoon in one semifinal.

The CC lived up to its reputation

Senior A.J. Barnold scored the lone goal in the Mules’ 1-0 win against Dickinson in 2007.

of having a high quality of play and considerable balance in 2008. The league had a non-conference winning percentage of .606, and all five playoff teams are ranked in the top 10 in the region – Swarthmore second, Johns Hopkins third, Muhlenberg sixth, Dickinson seventh and Gettysburg 10th. Swarthmore finished in first place with 24 points, and the other four teams had either 16 or 17 points, leading to multiple possible scenarios going into the final weekend.

That can make the playoffs hard to predict, and recent years have shown that anything can happen. In the three years since the playoffs expanded to five teams, the winner of the first-round game has knocked off the regular-season champion twice, with Gettysburg reaching the final as a No. 5 seed in 2005.

“It’s absolutely wide open,” said senior Brendan Carroll, who has a goal and an assist in his last two CC playoff games. “There are five quality teams, and any one of them can win. It all depends on who comes ready to play.”

The Mules have experience on their side, having qualified for the playoffs every year the CC has held a postseason tournament and going 4-3-2 all-time in CC playoff games. Last year, they lost to Johns Hopkins in the semifinals but still received an at-large bid to the NCAA Championships. Dickinson made its first playoff appearance last year, losing a shootout to Gettysburg in the first round.

The Red Devils won the regular-season meeting, 1-0, on a goal in the 15th minute. Dickinson held a slim 12-11 edge in shots, and the Mules had several good scoring chances, especially after a Devil player was red-carded with 15 minutes left.

“It was relatively even,” recalled Carroll. “They pressured our outside backs and we didn’t know what to do until the second half, when we started pressuring their outside backs.”

Muhlenberg leads the all-time series against Dickinson, 30-10-3, but the Red Devils have won three of the last four.

“As a team, they’re very fast and very strong,” said Carroll. “It’s going to be very difficult, a big battle. We’re going to have to come out fired up and hopefully put some goals in early, to put them on their heels.”

The Mule defense will also be under pressure to slow down a Dickinson team that is second in the CC in goals per game (2.24). Muhlenberg is second in the league in goals-against average (0.77) and has allowed more than one score only once in the last 14 games.

Muhlenberg is seeking its sixth CC championship. The last came in 2005, when Carroll and his six fellow seniors were freshmen.

“It was exciting being part of it as a freshman,” Carroll remarked. “Since we’ve put four years of work into it, it would be that much more of a prize for us.”
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