After splitting two games on a New York road trip to open the season, the Bobcats return to Pruitt Field on Saturday for their home opener against Radford University.
The familiar confines of Athens and their home field are a welcome sight to a Bobcat team that spent a good deal of their weekend on the road.
“It’s going to be very nice, especially not being on the bus like we were all weekend,” senior Marissa Higgins said. “It was a long trip and it’ll be really great to finally play on our turf.”
Though head coach Neil Macmillan looks forward to the opportunity for players to play in front of their friends and families for the first time this season, he doesn’t believe it makes a big difference in terms of the team’s performance.
“I think this is a game in which the better team wins the majority of the time,” he said. “If you want to make the analogy to football, Appalachian State doesn’t beat Michigan more than once out of 100 times. In our sport, the better team tends to win the game.”
Ohio is taking on a familiar opponent in Radford, who defeated Ohio in their home opener in 2010.
Despite their youth, Radford is a very pesky opponent according to Macmillan and is one of the more well-coached teams on their schedule.
“They’re a young team and goalkeeping is one of their major strengths,” Macmillan said. “I think that they can pose a good deal of trouble, so we need to be prepared.”
After losing their previous match to Syracuse 6-0, the team put in work to fix what plagued them Sunday.
“We got a good education in hockey from Syracuse and they showed us how a legitimate top 10 team plays,” Macmillan said. “They did a great job in moving and we weren’t where we wanted to be. We need to look at where we made our mistakes and see where we can improve.”
Higgins is also looking for the team to rebound from a match in which they were outshot by a margin of 27-4. The Bobcats weren’t outshot by that large of a margin during all last season.
“We really need to work on our transfers and communication and organization on the field,” Higgins said. “Hopefully we can come away from this game and feel that we did that.”
ch203310@ohiou.edu
UP NEXT:
SEPT. 1
Radford at OHIO,
1 p.m.
