A season in which the SMU men’s soccer team climbed to the ranks of the national elite will continue Sunday night when the Mustangs return to the NCAA Tournament for the 27th time in school history.

The Ponies, with a record of 15-2-0, enter the tournament as the No. 5 seed overall and will enjoy a bye in the first round before playing host to the winner of Thursday’s New Mexico-Creighton game in Omaha, Neb. SMU rallied from a 2-0 deficit earlier this season to beat Creighton at the Bradley (Ill.) Tournament; the Ponies did not play New Mexico.

Senior goalkeeper Craig Hill has three shutouts this season, and 13 in his SMU career (photo by SMU athletics).

Tickets to Sunday’s game, which will be at 7 p.m. at Westcott Field, can be purchased by logging on to SMUMustangs.com or by calling 214-SMU-GAME.

“We’re extremely excited to be in the NCAA Tournament, and to have the ability to play at home,” SMU head coach Tim McClements said. “We’re going to end up playing one of two very strong opponents. Creighton and New Mexico are excellent programs, and either way, we’re going to be prepared to do what we have to do.”

Many of the Mustang players gathered Monday afternoon, along with assorted athletic department staff, to watch the announcement of the tournament bracket, and not surprisingly, nobody expressed a desire to face a specific opponent in Sunday’s game.

“We’re excited to be back in the tournament, and to have such a high seed,” senior goalkeeper Craig Hill said. “If we play well enough to win, it means we’ll be at home until we get to North Carolina (in the quarterfinals). But that’s a long way off. We know we’re going to face an excellent team Sunday, whether it’s New Mexico or Creighton, and we can’t afford to look too far ahead.”

McClements and senior midfielder Kekoa Osorio agreed that the Mustangs’ 3-2 overtime victory Sept. 17 over Creighton was one of the key points in the Ponies’ season.

“Creighton, year in and year out, is one of the top performers in the NCAA,” said McClements, the 2010 Conference USA Coach of the Year. “We went and played them at a neutral site (Bradley University) and didn’t come out playing very well at the start. The fact that we were able to regroup and pull that game out … I think that game said a lot about this team.”

The Ponies’ win over the Bluejays included vital contributions from two of the Mustangs’ top players this season: freshman forward Juan Castillo, who ended up being named Conference USA Freshman of the Year scored the Mustangs’ first goal, while junior midfielder Arthur Ivo, who ended up sharing Conference USA’s Offensive Player of the Year award, buried a pair of penalty kicks — including the game-winner in the second overtime — to give SMU the win.

“That was a big win for us,” Osorio said. “In the first half, we weren’t showing anything. That was the first time we really had to regroup and refocus at halftime, and it worked. We were a different team in the second half, and I think it carried over after that game, too.”

Senior midfielder Kekoa Osorio said the Mustangs need to get back to "doing the little things" in order to enjoy success in the NCAA Tournament (photo by SMU athletics).

The Ponies have enjoyed a remarkable season, but enter the NCAA Tournament still stinging from a 2-1 loss to South Carolina in the semifinals of the Conference USA Tournament (in Memphis). That disappointment, while understandably unpleasant, might have given the Ponies blueprint they need to follow for more postseason success.

“We played one really good half of soccer in Memphis,” McClements said. “But it goes to show you have to play a full 90 minutes to be successful, because there’s a lot of parity.

“We try to stay on a pretty even keel, but that was a good lesson for us. This team has a lot of resolve, and we know what we’re good at, and what we’re not good at. We’re going to look at our opponent — whichever one we end up playing — and look at their qualities, what they do well. But we’re going to focus more on what we do well. We know that if we go out and perform, we’ll be in any game we play.”

Osorio said the loss to the Gamecocks should prove beneficial, because it could help the Ponies regain their attention to detail.

“I think it brings us back to normal,” Osorio said. “It kind of grounds you. It’s almost like we were lulled into winning at times, and we stopped doing the little things. We can’t stop doing the little things we need to do in order to win.”

Hill said the Mustangs’ strong regular season, which allowed the team to earn such a high seed, gives them a chance in the postseason.

“We are glad to be playing at home — that’s one of the things we worked for, because we play well at home. I’m glad we get to play another game,” Hill said, before stopping to think how many games it would take to get to the national championship game (Dec. 12 in Santa Barbara, Calif.)

“Actually, I want to play five more.”