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NCAA tournament loss no reflection on turnaround season

By Brian Fitzgerald

Cold and flu season is upon us, but BU women's soccer coach Nancy Feldman may be coming down with an acute case of the “what-ifs.”

What if that hot shot by Rebecca Beyer (CAS'04) had sailed into the UConn net instead of hitting the post in the first half of the NCAA tournament game November 14? What if America East Offensive Player of the Year Melissa Schulman (CAS'06) hadn't missed most of the game with a knee injury? What if there hadn't been hurricane-force wind gusts redirecting passes and shots for the entire contest? Feldman is now asking herself a lot of questions after the Terriers' 1-0 loss to the Huskies at Boston College.

“It's bittersweet to think about how close we were,” Feldman says of a potential upset of 15th-ranked UConn (14-5-3), who “squeaked by us,” blanked Michigan, 5-0, and then beat Brigham Young, 3-1. The Huskies will face Florida State in the Final Four on December 5. She says that she can't help but ponder a different outcome in the UConn game, but it would be unhealthy to dwell on it too much. After all, it was a successful season. A year ago, the Terriers finished with a miserable 7-10-2 record. This season, they were 12-6-5, won the America East title, and made it to the NCAA tournament.

There was disappointment with the loss, Feldman says, but no regrets. “Right after the game, I looked at the players' faces, and I think most of them felt the same way I did,” she says. “There seemed to be an appreciation for what a great game it was, how well we competed, and the fact that we left everything we had on the field.” The game certainly didn't leave a sour taste in their mouths. “There wasn't a feeling that we could have done more, that we missed some opportunities,” she says. “We were beaten by a very good team on a goal that was pretty much an impossible shot to stop.”

With just over five minutes left in the second half, UConn junior Kristen Graczyk, who had 18 goals this year, blasted the ball from outside the 18-yard box into the top left corner. In the middle of the cage, netminder Jessica Clinton (SHA'04) never had a chance. “If you're going to give up a goal, this was one where you'd say, that kid earned it,” Feldman says of the Big East Offensive Player of the Year. “There wasn't a whole lot more we could do.”

This was BU's third trip to the national tournament in four years. “The program has made huge strides, and I was impressed with the senior class,” Feldman says. The seniors “went out of the program the way they came into it their freshman year -- winning the America East Tournament. That was important to them.”

But no doubt the players, like Feldman, also have their moments of anguish. The what-if virus is contagious. “It's normal to have mixed feelings,” Feldman says. “If you think about it too much, you start to say, darn it, we could have won this game, we had a ball go off the post, we put them under pressure, and we definitely played them well enough to get it into overtime, to get another shot with the wind at our backs. And we felt confident that if the game went into a penalty kick situation, we could come up big, because the kids had been in that position a week before.”

In the conference championship on November 9, after playing to a scoreless tie during regulation and two 10-minute overtimes, BU beat Maine on sudden death penalty kicks, 3-2. The Terriers went from winning an overtime thriller one week to losing a tight, hard-fought game the next. “Sometimes it's tough to realize how close we were to having the biggest win in our program's history,” Feldman says.

However, she will focus on the positives. She says that the final two games bode well for the team's immediate future. “For the coaching staff, it was important to get back into the NCAA tournament,” she says, “and to have the freshman and sophomore classes know what it takes to win the America East championship.”

7 November 2003
Boston University
Office of University Relations