Washington College labored its way into the Centennial Conference tournament, losing 11-9 at No. 2 Gettysburg on Saturday and then waiting anxiously for Ursinus to defeat McDaniel to clinch the fourth and final berth in the playoffs.
So the Shoremen's reward for their sweat and nerves is a rematch with the Bullets (15-0), who went 8-0 in the league this spring. It's a daunting task for Washington College (6-9), but coach Jeff Shirk is focusing on the positives for Wednesday's semifinal contest.
"The way we're looking at it is, we're just excited to be in it and the fact that we're going back to Gettysburg, it might be a good thing from the standpoint of preparation because we just saw them and everything's fresh in your mind and we know what we're going to get," he said Monday. "But at the end of the day, I don't think the guys were really concerned about who we got, just that we got in."
The Shoremen were tied with Gettysburg at 7-7 with 7 minutes, 6 seconds left in the third quarter before the Bullets pulled away. Shirk said the team can draw some assurance from keeping pace with the Centennial Conference regular-season champion.
"The way the guys played and their effort level and their energy, we were with them the whole game," he said. "Like any close game, if a couple things were a little different, it could go the other way. I think the level at which the guys played, I'm hoping that gave them confidence that they can play at a very high level. They just need to be prepared and be ready to fly around and hopefully, we approach it the same way this Wednesday."
Pulling off an upset would seem like a Herculean assignment for Washington College, which has dropped four of its last five games. But Shirk pointed out that the team has shown flashes of the kind of play that last year's squad used to advance to the NCAA Division III tournament semifinals.
"I think we have to keep playing at a high level with speed and aggression like we have – like we did on Saturday at Gettysburg and at the end of the Swarthmore game," he said. "That's a must. And just like any time you get into the playoffs, you've got to work on executing better. I thought we played at a really high level on Saturday, and if we had executed a few things a little bit better, the score is different and we would have walked out of there winning as opposed to losing by two. So I think the focus is just keeping guys' nerves in check, but also having them ready to fly around and play to execute a little bit better."