Diary

Kevin
McCarthy

Past Entries

November 3, 2003

Last weekend was our second conference doubleheader of the season. Unlike the first doubleheader weekend, we had home field advantage.

Friday evening we played Brandeis in front of a frenzied home crowd. After playing to a tie last year in Boston, we were ready to hand Brandeis a loss. Feeding off the crowd's energy, we managed to score a season-high six goals in a 6-1 win.

But the weekend's business was not finished. We knew that NYU would come into Sunday's conference game ready to battle. We came out flat in the first half. Our team defense was lacking its usual intensity and we failed to effectively make off-the-ball runs. Overall, we didn't have any bounce in our step and NYU capitalized, scoring a goal on a corner late in the first half.

At halftime we knew that losing this game would cost us any chance at an appearance in the NCAA tournament. The team emerged from the halftime talk confident that we would step our play and win the game. Not only did we acknowledge that we needed to step up our play, but we knew that we needed to start playing our game.

With a combination of increased intensity and confidence in our system, we were a different team in the second half. We got an early goal on a header by 5-foot-6 striker Jon Arost. Once we got that first goal, we knew that NYU wouldn't be able to stop us.

Shortly thereafter, Jacques Edeline ran onto a brilliant pass from midfielder Chris Scharer and tucked the game-winning goal into the back of the net. We locked down defensively and got an insurance goal from Karl Dix, ensuring that NYU didn't have a chance to come back.

So now we stand at 16-1-1. We play our last game this Saturday at 1 pm at home against Carnegie Mellon. We've put ourselves into contention for both the conference title and an NCAA berth (either by way of a conference title or an at-large bid).

Regardless of the results from other games in the conference, Saturday's game is a must win for us. Carnegie Mellon has had our number for the past couple of years. We're determined to change that in this weekend's match.

It's the biggest game of the season. Freshmen are making flyers so we're expecting a big crowd and you can bet that we'll be ready for the match.

Kevin McCarthy is a junior from St. Louis, Mo. He would love to answer e-mail questions from Emory recruits and fans.