The Georgetown women’s soccer team (11-4-5, 6-0-3 Big East) will play at No. 7 West Virginia (16-2-3, 7-0-1 Big 12) on Saturday at 4 p.m. in the first round of the NCAA Women’s Soccer Championship.

Monday’s tournament selection represented Georgetown’s third consecutive trip to the 64-team national championship, and its fourth in the last five seasons.
The Hoyas have already faced the Mountaineers, who are the third-seeded team in the bracket, this season, drawing 1-1 after two overtimes in Morgantown, W. Va., on Sept. 12.

Head Coach Dave Nolan knew the team would be on the bubble going into the NCAA selection process after a penalty shootout victory and a loss to finish second in last weekend’s Big East championship.

“I felt we would be one of the last couple of teams in,” Nolan said. “I would have felt more confident if technically we had beat St. John’s, instead of tying them. … But I still knew our body of work stood up with those teams in the mix with us.”

The West Virginia match will mark the Hoyas’ fifth-ever appearance in the NCAAs, and Nolan appreciates the difficulty of making the tournament every year, with perennial contenders Duke, Boston College and Wake Forest missing out on this year’s bracket.

“It’s not easy. People expect certain programs to be hitting the NCAAs every year,” Nolan said. “But it’s not an easy achievement to get into this national tournament every year, because the competition is so strong. For us to be there three years in a row … I think it shows that we’ve made the step into that next group of schools, which is a group that’s always competing to be in the national tournament.”

The only other Big East school to make the tournament, No. 13 DePaul, will travel to take on the fourth-seeded No. 9 Wisconsin; West Virginia qualified as a third-seed.

Big East Attacking Player and Midfielder of the Year Daphne Corboz understands the difficulty of traveling four hours to take on such a big, aggressive team in a hostile environment.

“West Virginia is obviously a great team,” Corboz said. “They won the Big 12 and had great results all year long. Attacking, they’re fantastic; defensively, they have one of the top defenders in the country, who plays for the full [national] Canadian team [in sophomore Kadeisha Buchanan]. All-around, they’re a very athletic team and have a lot of energy, and it’ll be a really tough game. I think tying them in the regular season gives us a little bit of motivation to come out there.”

On the offensive side, the senior attacking midfielder is focused on getting past Buchanan, but a defensive concern for the Hoyas is the loss of junior defender Marina Paul for the rest of the year. She suffered a season-ending knee injury against DePaul, according to a report from the Laguna Beach Independent, Paul’s hometown newspaper, published Nov. 13.

“I just need to become the best cheerleader on the sidelines,” Paul told the Laguna Beach Independent.

Though West Virginia are one of the country’s top teams and feature height and athleticism that will challenge the Hoyas, Georgetown remains confident, having earned a draw in the last meeting and having given up just five goals in the last seven matches.

“The West Virginia result was a huge result for us,” Nolan said. “[It’s] ironic we have to go back there now; that is our reward. …The last game [we] played … they were probably a little bit better and probably should have won, but we could have won. And we probably had the best chance to win it in overtime, when their keeper made a really good save on a chance Daphne [Corboz] had.”

Chances have been there for Georgetown all season, and whether the team capitalizes on those chances is the difference between an 8-0 away win over Seton Hall (3-10-5, 0-6-3 Big East) and a 1-0 home nail-biter over Providence (9-8-2, 5-4-0 Big East).

The team knows that they just sneaked into the tournament, but with talent all over the pitch, they are certainly capable of making a run in the NCAAs.

“I’d lie if I didn’t say I was surprised,” Corboz said. “We were already on the bubble going into the weekend … But I really did hold on to some hope, hoping that [the selection committee] would take two teams from the Big East. Fortunately, they did.”