Soccer plays to scoreless draw in double overtime
Perhaps it was a bit of Friday 13 bad luck that caused the Aggies to out-shoot San Jose State 30-16 but only get a scoreless draw after 110 minutes of play.
Facing the Spartans, the top-ranked WAC team, the Aggies looked to take over the title, but never landed a shot after a match that went into double overtime. Plenty of opportunities were available as USU racked up the highest number of shots in a game since Oct. 9, 2005 when the Aggies had 34 shots in the 2-0 win over Louisiana Tech.
“If you look at the tie on paper it looks good,” Head Coach Heather Cairns said, “but if you look at the game it’s a moral disappointment.”
A slow start by the Aggies allowed the Spartans to take control of the game. In the first 20 minutes of the game, SJSU fired four close shots, two of which forced sophomore goalkeeper Ali Griffin sprawling to save.
Griffin’s seven saves and tight protection prevented the Spartans from scoring, and moved her to a second place tie on USU’s career shutout list with five.
“It took us a while to figure out their formation,” Cairns said. “I thought after the first 20 minutes we took control of the game.”
After the shots by SJSU, the Aggies countered with eight shots that kept the action near the Spartan goalkeeper the remainder of the half. The Aggies took control of the game and ended the half with 13 shots, six of which were on goal. The 13 shots are the second most in the first half by the Aggies all season.
The second half began with slow attacks on both sides, as most of the action centered on midfield. Ten minutes in, USU controlled the pace of the game, and unleashed a barrage of shots on the goal. Forwards Charity Weston and Erin Salmon led the second half attack. Salmon finished the game with six shots, including two on goal. Weston set a new USU single-match record with 10 shots, four of which were on goal.
The high-energy attack was fueled by junior midfielder Dana Peart and senior midfielder Sierra Smith. A strategy the team worked to implement this game was using flanks Peart and Smith to bring the ball down for a better attack, Cairns said.
“It worked really well,” Peart said of the strategy. “We had some nice crosses. The whole team created a heck of a lot of opportunities.”
Despite close shots in the final minutes of the first half by both sides, the score remained 0-0, sending it into overtime.
The first overtime match was dominated by Peart. She provided all three of USU’s scoring opportunities, with two of her shots just shy of landing in the net. Not finishing any shots, the match progressed to a second overtime.
“We out-shot them but just didn’t execute on those opportunities,” Peart said. “We kept them off the board but didn’t execute.”
The second overtime started off with a hard shot by the Spartans that went slightly to the right. The Aggies countered with shots by Smith and Weston. With less than three minutes to play, Smith pounded the closest shot of the game, as the ball bounced off the right post. A last minute shot by the Spartans was scooped up by Griffin, as the game finished 0-0.
“It wasn’t our day all day,” Cairns said. “To our team’s credit, we kept pushing and pushing and did not give up. They wouldn’t fall today. Nothing was going in today.”
-sethhawkins@cc.usu.edu