Women’s soccer loses pair of games
The Utah State women’s soccer team lost both their matches over the weekend against UNLV and BYU.
Monday night, in front of 2,758 cougar fans, the Aggies lost 5-0 to BYU.
The crowd was more into it than USU was since the Cougars were constantly attacking the entire game.
The Ags were outshot 18-4 and managed just one shot the entire first half.
When Utah State would mount an attack, the BYU players would always manage to win a header or clear it out to prevent any real threat.
“In the first half, we got beat by a team that played faster than us,” Utah State Head Coach Heather Cairns said. “They didn’t turn it over that much and in the second half we beat ourselves. We just fell apart.”
The Cougars scored in the 18th and 33rd minutes of the first half and then topped off the game with three goals in the final 20 minutes of the game.
The two first half goals came off counterattacks where the Aggies were pushing the ball up the field but the Cougars stole it and quickly reversed the field. This gave one of their forwards a free run on the weak side.
Last Friday, the Aggies lost to UNLV 2-1 in a game where the Ags fell because of a couple defensive lapses within three minutes of each other.
The Rebels scored goals in the 12th and 14th minutes to go up 2-0.
The story of the game was the Rebels’ goalie Ciera Nero. After giving up the Aggies lone goal in the first five minutes of the half, Nero went on to record six saves the rest of the second half.
“She did a really good job and saved a lot of dangerous balls when we were one on one,” Smith said of Nero. “We got some pretty open shots and she saved a lot of those too.”
It didn’t matter if the Ags got a player open on a run or there was a scramble in the box, Nero was there to gobble up the ball like a vacuum.
Part of the problem could have been the Aggies’ shots.
Utah State head coach Heather Cairns said it appeared that to score, the Ags would have to go low, but the players didn’t always keep the ball near the ground on their shots.
“I’m not sure how many times we went low,” Cairns said. “A lot of our scoring opportunities went high, so that’s a breakdown on our part.”
After the half, the Ags kept the ball on the attack for the first five minutes.
Sierra Smith served a nice ball, which Dana Peart headed in to put the Aggies just one back of the Rebels at the 50th minute.
“I knew I could do it, so I decided today was a good day to start getting those in,” Smith said of her crosses that helped the Aggies get 18 shots off to the Rebels’ 11.
The Aggies will play their next two games in Montana at the Montana Nike Cup. They will face off against Air Force on Friday and Montana on Sunday.
The tough games for the Aggies are over since three of the last four matches have been against NCAA tournament-caliber teams.
Four of the Aggies’ next eight games will be played against Big Sky teams.
-krn@cc.usu.edu