Even though it is the two-time defending regular season Mid-American Conference champion, the Ball State University soccer team is prepared to take the underdog role this weekend.
The Cardinals (0-1) travel to play the University of Oklahoma (0-1) at 2 p.m. Sunday, their first game against a Big 12 opponent since they lost to Iowa State University in the program's inaugural season, 1999.
Coach Michael Lovett said although Oklahoma is in one of the nation's largest conferences, Ball State is not intimidated.
"In the past, a mid-major program that was on the rise like Ball State has gone to a program like Oklahoma and just been happy to be there and gotten slaughtered," he said. "We know that we are a good enough program not to do that. We don't just want to be happy to be there for a road trip. We want to go and get a positive result."
Coming from a mid-major conference, the Mid-American Conference, Lovett said Ball State enters Sunday's matchup as the underdog. However, unlike the first Cardinals' team that played a Big 12 opponent, Ball State enters with a lot of experience and confidence.
Ball State won the past two MAC regular-season titles outright and became the first team in conference history to achieve the feat. The confidence the team gained the past two seasons has helped the players prepare mentally for the challenge of facing a big program such as Oklahoma, Lovett said.
"A couple years ago - some of the seniors have said this - it just would have been 'Wow, we're happy to be here. Let's not get killed 5-0,'" Lovett said. "Now with back-to-back conference titles under their belt and just being very confident as a team, they're not intimidated.
Even though Ball State has a couple of championships, junior Megan Ridley said the Cardinals have more to accomplish. One of the team's goals is to show it can compete against the nation's top teams, she said.
"I think we have a lot to prove," Ridley said. "Of course we are the underdogs, but I feel that we are a Cinderella story in the making. This is a chance to prove how we shape up to teams in the NCAA tournament, so it should be a good challenge."
Entering this weekend's game, Ball State is trying to get its season going in the direction it wants after a 1-0 loss at Valparaiso University last week.
Ridley said the key to getting the team going in the right direction is just playing soccer and not overthinking a lot, like the team did against Valparaiso.
"We'll get back on our horse," Ridley said. "We know how to win, and we're used to winning, so we're going to get back on our horse and start there at Oklahoma."
One of the problems that hindered the Cardinals against Valparaiso was focusing too much on defense, Lovett said.
"We wanted to be defensively sound, and we may have focused a little too much on defense because our game against Valpo, we had no offense," he said. "It was just strictly a defensive game, which is not what we wanted."
This week the Cardinals focused more on offense, including some practices that concentrated solely on the offensive side of the ball, Lovett said.
The team also named Rachael Murphy the Cardinals' goalkeeper for the entire game against Oklahoma. Against Valparaiso, Murphy, last year's starting goalkeeper, played the first half while Amy Cleeter played the second half.
"[Murphy's] earned the starting position," Lovett said. "It has been a good battle, but she separated herself through game performance and practice performance and those standards that it takes."
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