The No. 11 Georgetown men’s soccer team will take the field Sunday to play in the NCAA tournament for the third consecutive year, taking on the No. 23 Old Dominion Monarchs at Shaw Field at 1 p.m. in a rematch of last season’s NCAA tournament second round.

“We are hopefully five games away from winning a national championship and going off on a high note,” senior goalkeeper and captain Tomas Gomez said.

The 2014 season is the third consecutive season in which the Hoyas have made it to the NCAA tournament. In 2012, a team that included six players who would eventually be drafted into Major League Soccer, reached the national championship game before falling to Indiana. Georgetown earned a first-round bye last season as the No. 8 overall team and won the second round against Old Dominion 3-0, but it was stopped in the third round by No. 11 Michigan State 1-0. A repeat of 2012 was not in the cards, as the Spartans came to Shaw Field and won the closely contested match on the back of a surprise goal against the run of play.

The 2014 Hoyas finished the year with a 12-4-3 record and a 6-2-1 record in the Big East. Their loss to the No. 14 Xavier Musketeers (13-5-2, 6-1-2 Big East) on Nov. 14 in the Big East semifinals ended a five-game winning streak that began Oct. 25 against the No. 9 Creighton Bluejays (14-3-2, 7-1-1 Big East). Despite the mild upset, the Hoyas’ recent solid play was enough to land them the eighth overall seed in the tournament and secure a first-round bye.

“We kind of got unlucky in the Big East [semifinals],” Gomez said. “A lot of the teams that go on to win national championships don’t win their conference titles, so I feel like we will grind it out.”

Like last year, Georgetown earned an opening round bye in the NCAA tournament could prove to make a difference for the Hoyas. They did not earn an early bye in the conference tournament and would have had to win three games instead of two to bring home the Big East title. The Hoyas also benefit from an added off day to recover from what has been a difficult run of games. They have played four times over the last two weeks, and a game Thursday would have been the third in six days.

“Getting a [bye] is massive. In 2010 when we made the [NCAA] tournament … we ended up having to play a first-round game. Even though it was a home game, it was a hard game. You have to win that game, and then it means you’re playing someone on the road who is rested and able to focus in on what they are doing for the week,” Head Coach Brian Wiese said.

In last year’s second-round defeat of Old Dominion, goals by junior defender Cole Seiler, sophomore midfielder Bakie Goodman and sophomore forward Alex Muyl brought Georgetown to victory. That game ended in a physical altercation, which centered on former forward Steve Neumann (MSB ’14) and former Monarchs goalkeeper Sean Stowe. The benches cleared, and referees had to separate the sides before the game could resume.

This year’s Old Dominion squad qualified for the tournament by winning the Conference USA title. It had marquee wins in the regular season over No. 8 Charlotte and Virginia Commonwealth. Its losses, however, tell a different story. Old Dominion was unable to defeat a number of weak opponents, including UNC-Wilmington and Marshall. Even though the Monarchs were heavily favored to win in their opening round match Thursday against St. Francis, Wiese and the Hoyas had to prepare for both possible opponents.

“You’ll start preparing for both teams. … You really have a short turnaround once you know who you are playing. You have two working days to address it,” Wiese said.

For the five seniors on the roster, the NCAA tournament will be the last time they will put on the Georgetown uniform. Gomez is one of them, and he has started 54 consecutive matches for the team dating back to midway through the 2012 campaign. Despite being on the tail end of his college career, Gomez does not think that it is time for reflection yet — singularly focused on the upcoming match.

“I approach it one game at a time,” Gomez said. “You just have to leave it all out on the field. That’s just the main thing each year because this is do-or-die.”