Women’s Soccer Falls to #21 St. Louis 2-0
The Utah State women’s soccer suffered their first loss of the season in Logan at the hands of the St. Louis Billikens.
The Aggies entered the contest coming hot off a win over in-state foe, Weber State, and would fall to 1-1 in their non-conference slate. The Billikens enter the season riding high off arguably their best season ever, one which saw them reach as high as the number 4 ranking in the college soccer news ratings. They returned key pieces, landed 4 players on the Hermann Trophy watch list and came into Logan ranked #21, despite their recent loss to #13 BYU.
The Aggies started off strong taking the first 3 shots of the game, including one by Kaityln Richins in the 4th minute but fell short of taking an early lead.
Freshman midfielder Summer Diamond, who had a scorching hot start to her college career with 2 goals against Weber State, continued her impressive play with a sharp block on what would have been a close-range shot for St. Louis.
“We only recruit players that we believe can come in and help us. We have a really good class…There are areas where they’re trying to learn and adapt to the speed of play and the physical demands of the college game. But two games in, we have gotten plenty of contribution,” head coach Manny Martins said.
The Aggies went into the half down 1-0 but returned with energy, which wasn’t lost on coach Martins.
“This was a tough match. I thought we didn’t play well in the first half,” he said. “I thought we had some nervous energy, I thought we had a different attitude in the second half, we came out a lot stronger and showed more of our identity. We conceded two goals on set pieces, so that’s disappointing, but this is a team that was 20-2 last year, returning everyone, they’re probably again going to be one of the best teams in the country and I thought we held our own well and the future is promising.”
Utah State would lead the contest in shots by a count of 14-11, with 10 different Aggies registering a shot. Their 7 fouls, including a yellow card assessed to senior Alysia Butters, was less than the Billikens 12. In the end, the game-changing stat for this contest would be the Billikens’ 8 corner kicks to the Aggies’ 3.
Both goals for St. Louis came from corner kicks by Hannah Larson. One in the 33rd minute to Sophia Stram and one in the 64th to Hannah Sawyer.
Coach Martins sees what the Aggies will need to improve going forward.
“The number one thing is set pieces will decide games. We know that we’ve talked about that with our team,” he said. “We’re pretty diligent about training and preparing those, today we got [beat] on two set pieces.”
“So we have to get better and clean up defensively in our set pieces, and then just [be] able to sometimes be in a position where we’re down and still able to grab a little bit more composure”
The Aggies will look to bounce back Thursday when they host the University of Utah at home.