This is where things ended a season ago for Georgia soccer.

Fresh off an unlikely run to the SEC championship game, the Bulldogs earned an at-large NCAA tournament bid, before being derailed in the first round by the Colonial Athletic Association’s James Madison, 1-0.

The lone goal in that match, a second half Georgia own-goal, sent the Bulldogs packing. As expected, the loss was a tough pill to swallow.

“To play well enough to win but come away with a loss was pretty disheartening. And we scored an own-goal on top of it,” said Georgia head coach Patrick Baker.

23 of the 28 players on Georgia’s roster this year remember that loss, but all 28 of them will be looking to erase those memories with a win this evening in Chapel Hill, N.C.

Tonight, the Bulldogs (14-5-1) square off against another CAA foe in the NCAA Tournament first round. This time its Colonial champions UNC-Wilimington (13-7-1) at 7:30 p.m. at Fetzer Field on the campus of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

The match will mark the Bulldogs’ school-record third straight NCAA Tournament trip and the first ever meeting between the Bulldogs and the Seahawks, who enter Friday’s match riding a five-game win streak.

“There are two scenarios on the first day: you win, you get an opportunity to play on Sunday; you lose, and, like last year, the same type of emotions and feelings are going to come into play,” said Baker.

Scenario one is the obvious goal for the Bulldogs, who, with a win tonight, will be looking to make their first second round NCAA tournament appearance since 2007, when the squad was narrowly defeated by Duke, 1-0.

The Bulldogs’ best NCAA tournament run came 11 years ago, when the 1998 squad advanced to the Sweet Sixteen.

Should the Bulldogs manage to navigate their way past UNC-Wilmington, their path to the 2009 College Cup will get no easier come Sunday, when the second round of tournament play gets underway.

With a win tonight, Georgia is slated to take on the winner of today’s 5 p.m. match between High Point and the heavily-favored hosts UNC-Chapel Hill, who secured one of the tournament’s four No. 1 overall seeds after posting a 17-3-1 regular season mark.

Though Baker insists his team isn’t looking ahead to Sunday’s possible match-up, he knows that nothing would mean more to the team’s eight seniors than to get a shot to take down the vaunted Tarheels.

“I think what [the seniors] realize now is that there are no guarantees for tomorrow, and that’s different,” said Baker.

“I think a lot of them feel like, you know what, let’s go out and try [to] make a statement on Friday if we can, just about who we are and what kind of team we can be, and then if things shake out and we get that opportunity, let’s go shock the world.”