Coming off last Thursday’s 2-1 loss to Kentucky, coach Todd Bramble said the team is having mixed emotions right now.
“We’re excited that we have gotten back to this point in the season, which is being a postseason team,” Bramble said. “But I also feel like the group is not totally satisfied and is in a pretty good place of still wanting to accomplish more – getting into this tournament, seeing how far we can advance and then hopefully getting selected for NCAA tournament after this.”
Both senior Merel van Dongen and junior Abby Lutzenkirchen said the team is still not satisfied, but there is no lack of excitement for the Crimson Tide.
“We’re super, super, super excited about postseason,” van Dongen said. “Especially for our team, it’s just really important that we’re going to be able to play for the SEC championship. This team is something really special this year.”
With this year’s team, Lutzenkirchen said, something clicked that has enabled them to outperform previous seasons and lock in their seed in the tournament. Different from years before, this team’s organization has built them up to being a stronger team overall.
“We’re just organized much more defensively, which has been huge to us with the amount of shutouts we have had, especially being in the SEC,” Lutzenkirchen said. “The organization has been a lot stronger than it has in the past. If we just stay organized defensively, it will help us more offensively.”
For this tournament, shutouts are the key to success. In the 2013 competition, every team that lost in the first two rounds failed to score in its final match.
“If they don’t score, they won’t win,” Lutzenkirchen said.
With the loss to Kentucky dropping the Crimson Tide three spots in the tournament standings, Alabama was hoping for a bye on Wednesday but is now scheduled to play against the No. 10 seed University of Tennessee Monday at 3:30 p.m., the first day of the tournament. The entire tournament will be aired on the SEC Network.
