Last season, MSU made it to the NCAA Tournament. The Spartans beat Milwaukee in their first game before losing 1-0 to No. 1 Notre Dame in the second round.

While the Spartans were playing in November, Santa Clara wasn’t, as a 4-12-4 record left them out of the postseason for the first time in 20 years.

So when the Spartans (11-4-4) play the Broncos (14-2-2) at 6 p.m. today at Santa Clara in the first round of the NCAA Tournament, Freeman believes it’s the Spartans who will hold an advantage in one of the biggest factors of postseason play — experience.

“I’ve heard they have a young team and I’ve heard they have three freshmen in the back, so they’ve never been in the tournament — they’ve never had any experience in it,” Freeman said.

“Most of our team knows what it feels like to be on that stage, and we know how important that first game is. A lot of teams, the freshmen, they don’t know. Even our freshmen don’t know, and you can’t explain it. They just have to go through it.”

The Spartans return all but three of the 12 players who played in last season’s final game against Notre Dame, two of whom — senior midfielder Lauren Sinacola and sophomore forward Laura Heyboer — are out with injuries.

“Last year, I thought we played really well the whole time during the tournament,” sophomore goalkeeper Jill Flietstra said.

“So hopefully we can carry that over and continue to play well.”

Although MSU might have the edge in experience, Santa Clara brings a couple of different wrinkles that will make it tough on the Spartans, MSU head coach Tom Saxton said.

One aspect of Santa Clara’s style that has bothered other Big Ten opponents this season — they beat Purdue 3-1 and Wisconsin 2-1 — is its tendency to consistently interchange players. Because of that, no Bronco has more than six goals this season, but eight have scored two or more.

Saxton said he doesn’t expect the constant change to be an issue for MSU, which plays zone defense, but said one thing the Spartans need to focus on is not wasting opportunities on counterattacks or restarts in a match in which Saxton expects to have few opportunities.

The Broncos’ fast paced style of play is a concern for Saxton, however. He said a big focus for the Spartans will be to stay calm and patient on defense and not dive in to attempt to make big plays.

Usually, those are attributes of a team that has played in big games — something the Spartans did last week to make it to the tournament.

“I’m hoping our experience will pay off, and my main thing will be just to stay loose and confident,” Saxton said. “That’s the approach we took into the Ohio State game and we really have nothing to lose and everything to gain.”