Soccer Looking to Make History in MAC Title Game

MAC Championship Game
Ball State at Bowling Green
Saturday, April 17 (7 p.m.)
Bowling Green, Ohio (Cochrane Stadium)
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The Ball State soccer team has a chance to make a little history Saturday night.

BSU has long featured one of the MAC's winningest programs. In fact, no league team owns more regular season championships than the Cardinals' four.

Just one thing has eluded the Soccer Cardinals: a trip to the NCAA Tournament. And this year's group has its sights set on changing that.

West Division champion Ball State (6-2-1) will visit East Division champion Bowling Green (5-1-0) for the MAC Championship with an automatic NCAA berth on the line.

The Cardinals have played in the title game twice before: in 2013 against Western Michigan and in 2018 against this same Bowling Green program. The teams played to a 1-1 draw in that one before the Falcons emerged on their home turf in penalty kicks.

Ball State is looking to even the score this time around.

"That left a really bad taste in our mouth," said Jenna Dombrowski, a freshman on that 2018 team. "We're more than ready, and we're so excited."

The MAC may have gone away from a full-on tournament this year, opting instead for a single championship game featuring the division winners, but make no mistake, Ball State has been in tournament mode for a while now.

The Cardinals entered the last week of the regular season needing to win their final two games to get to this point. They treated last Thursday at Northern Illinois like a quarterfinal game. And Sunday's matchup with Eastern Michigan truly was a de facto semifinal. Whichever team won was headed for the title game.

Melissa Diceman's 84th-minute goal secured the win at NIU, and Dombrowski's brace powered the Cardinals past EMU and into this showdown with Bowling Green.

"We've talked about this from the day I got here and all through the season," said second-year head coach Josh Rife, the MAC Coach of the Year. "We want to go do something that's never been done before in this program's history. It's a goal we've had since day one, but it doesn't just happen. There's a lot of work that has gone into getting us to this point, so I know the ladies are excited."

The numbers bear out why these two teams are here. Ball State has surrendered only seven goals in its nine games and has featured a variety of goal scorers led by Diceman and All-MAC Second Team forward Tatiana Mason with three each. Bowling Green has scored 15 goals and surrendered only two (both in its lone loss to Buffalo) in six games. The Falcons did not play their last four scheduled games because of a COVID pause.

RELATED: Dombrowski, Kean Earn Weekly MAC Honors

The teams have not faced each other, playing only divisional opponents in this COVID-shortened season, but they have been dueling it out at the top of this league for several years now.

Ball State has been standard bearer for more than half a decade, going 50-9-5 in conference play over the past six seasons for an .820 winning percentage that is far and away the best in the league. Bowling Green has become a dominant program over the second half of that stretch, going 25-3-0 for an .893 winning percentage over the past three years.

One of those three losses came last season to these Ball State Cardinals on the same Cochrane Stadium turf that will host Saturday's championship game. All-MAC First Team midfielder Nicky Potts scored in the 101st minute that afternoon for a double-overtime BSU victory.

Ball State will look to channel some of that positive energy this time around against a Bowling Green team that has won each of the past two MAC Championship games in PKs (two years ago against BSU, last year against Eastern Michigan).

If they can, they will write an historic new chapter for an already accomplished program and book their ticket to the NCAA Tournament later this month in North Carolina.

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Players Mentioned

Melissa Diceman

Jenna Dombrowski

Tatiana Mason

Nicky Potts