Ags lose focus, fall 2-0 to Utes
Both USU and the University of Utah threatened to score throughout the first half of Saturday’s soccer rivalry match, but it took less than two minutes into the second half for the Utes to make those threats a promise, defeating the Aggies 2-0.
In the past weekend, the Aggies faced arguably the two toughest opponents they will face this season. With the loss to Utah, the Aggies fall to 4-8 on the season, dropping four of the last five matches. Despite regularly shooting a high number of shots each game, USU has struggled to finish and be consistent, which has contributed to the losing record, Head Coach Heather Cairns said.
“We can’t keep telling ourselves that we’re not 4-8, because we are,” Cairns said. “That’s where that mental toughness, that grit, coming out could have made a difference today. We could have been 5-7. Especially because I think we outshot them in terms of shots on goals. It was a good opportunity for us that we didn’t make the most of. You can tell yourself that we’re not a 4-8 team, but we’re not playing well enough to win games. It’s about playing for 90 minutes. The teams that can play for 90 minutes are the teams that can make the most of their opportunities and are the teams that win, and we’re inconsistent in that area still.”
The Aggies’ struggle to finish is evident in their season stats. USU has outshot opponents 162-151 this season, but the goals ratio is in favor of the opposition, as the Aggies lag 19-12 in goals on the year. The challenge to score and prevent opponents from scoring in the second half has been particularly difficult for the Aggies as they have only scored five goals after the first half, compared to 14 for their opponents.
The cold, soggy battle against the University of Utah followed the pattern.
The first half showed strong, dangerous attacks by both teams, but it was the Aggie offense that held a tight edge, placing six shots on goal compared to the Utes’ three. In the opening minutes of the game, USU fired off three shots, keeping the Utes busy on the defensive end. At the end of the half, six USU players had recorded shots on goal, showing the depth of their attack.
The University of Utah had plenty of scoring opportunities of its own, but the USU defense, led by sophomore defender Lindsey Smart and junior defender Alyssa Lowry, kept the Utes from capitalizing on the deep penetration.
The second half was an entirely different story.
It started out much the same as the first half, with the Aggies making a beeline to Utah goalkeeper Lynzee Lee, but she scooped it up and sent the ball down field. The Utes’ leading scorer, Adele Letro, one of the best shooters in the Mountain West Conference, capitalized on a quick counterattack to pound in the first goal of the game from 18 yards out, her 13th score of the season.
Smart said of the score: “She hit it long and I guess the forwards snuck through and it was perfect. They timed it right so she wasn’t offsides. I don’t think any of us were ready for it.”
Not only were the Aggies not ready for Letro’s goal, but they weren’t mentally or physically ready for the shooting barrage that followed for the remainder of the half, Cairns said.
“I think after the first goal, the tides changed,” Cairns said. “We came out relatively strong, but that goal was so early and so quick that we let down mentally today. We told them today, the team that’s going to be mentally the strongest is going to win this game.
“I think we got spooked when we had all those opportunities and couldn’t put one in. We didn’t respond mentally well to that. We didn’t stay strong. We didn’t stay positive and stay hopeful. We kind of hung our heads when it didn’t go our way early, and it affected the rest of the game. So I think that was big.”
The Utes mercilessly fired off 10 shots, half of which were on frame to keep the Aggies consistently on the defensive. The few shots USU got in the half came off fast breaks by a single player, taking deep, nonthreatening shots. The forwards struggled to get the ball forward and thus failed to score, Cairns said.
“We didn’t possess the ball at all,” Cairns said. “We’re a better team when we connect two or three passes and go forward. We never connected two or three (passes). Our possession wasn’t there as well, which didn’t allow us to work the ball up to the forwards. It’s hard to do that in the rain. We didn’t respond well. We just gave up. We didn’t have the fight for 90 minutes.”
The lack of Aggie aggression showed itself again in the 55th minute when Utah defender Katy Reineke, who was the statistical game leader for the Utes, fired off a hard, angled shot from the right corner of the box to the left corner of the net to extend the Ute lead to 2-0. USU goalkeeper Ali Griffin lost her footing on the shot, leaving the net open for the goal.
Demoralized, the Aggies failed to mount a truly effective attack the rest of the game and fell to their second straight MWC opponent.
“It was all mental,” Smart said of the loss. “We didn’t come out. We had more shots than they did, or just as many, and we didn’t capitalize on them in the first half. We should have scored in the first half. I think people weren’t mentally tough to finish that game.”
Cairns said the loss was particularly tough after a such a successful first half.
“It’s just tough because you see glimpses of brilliance,” Cairns said. “The problem is it’s glimpses of brilliance and then it’s mediocrity or worse in some cases. It’s got to be glimpses of brilliance and good. You can’t have that big of a deviation in terms of the quality of your play because when you do hit those lows, you want your lows to be average. You don’t want your lows to be low and at times we’ve shown that we’re low, we struggle pretty bad.”
The bright spot on her team, Cairns said, was the defensive line.
“I thought (Smart) and (Lowry) really sparked us,” she said. “The difference between when we play well and we don’t is when we play, well, there’s a list of 16 players … They’re all doing great stuff on the field. When we lose, the number of those go down. I felt that those two really stood out and battled their forwards. Their first goal was their special player. But I’m tired of saying that because we have special players too, but our special players didn’t come through. We just didn’t play well enough to give them the opportunities, and they didn’t play.”
-seth.h@aggiemail.usu.edu