McDaniel’s 12-10 victory over then-No. 13 Gettysburg Saturday produced two positive results. It snapped a 17-game losing skid to the Bullets and put the Green Terror in position to make the Centennial Conference Tournament for the third time in four years.
If McDaniel (8-6 overall and 4-3 in the league) can beat Swarthmore (6-8, 2-5) this Saturday, it will finish the season in fourth place and clinch the final spot in the tournament.
The Green Terror can qualify for the tournament if Haverford (5-8, 3-4) loses to Muhlenberg (2-11, 0-7) Saturday night. But that’s not the approach coach Matt Hatton is taking.
“[W]e just want to take care of our own business, and we want to be in control of our own destiny,” he said Tuesday. “We want to go up and get the W. And for us to get into the conference tournament, we want to get into it with a little bit of momentum. I think we have some momentum coming right now, but we want to do it the right way. We want to get in and hopefully have a good showing on Saturday so that we can keep this thing going in the right direction into the conference tournament. We don’t want to rely on anybody else to have to get it done for us. We’ll take what we can get obviously, but I’d much rather have a really good showing on Saturday and try to take care of business ourselves.”
McDaniel has helped itself by stringing together four consecutive wins, topped by the victory over Gettysburg. But Hatton said the players should not be content with that outcome.
“We don’t want to hang our hats on the Gettysburg win, but that we’re looking at the bigger picture and making sure that we have a really good week of preparation for Swarthmore, which is also a very talented team,” he said. “We want to go up there on Saturday and take care of business and hopefully extend the season and play for another week or so and see how far we can go.”
