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Women's Soccer Coaches Corner Going into Tuesday’s match against Lindsey Wilson, we all that that this would be a tall task. It would be fairer for us to evaluate that match on how well we played versus the result. Lindsey is the reigning National Champions and were ranked #2 in the nation coming into the game. They were as good as advertised. They played a very intelligent game and had players that could execute it over and over. I was a little surprised with their athleticism. I did not expect them to be as athletic as they were and that was only because most of their players are internationals. We played very hard and ran the entire game no matter the score-line which I was extremely proud to see the ladies do. They were very efficient in their attack and only scored 1 goal on a one on one with a keeper the rest were from crosses and shots from the outside. However, we made them work for each goal they scored and even had a couple of chances early on that we should have finished. We had a shot hit the crossbar from close range and later in the 1 st half missed a PK. All in all I felt it was a good performance for us. Most teams sit back against Lindsey, try to get a lot of numbers behind the ball and defend against them which usually makes for some pretty ugly soccer. I decided that we would play them as any other team for our development as a team. I believed on that day we accomplished it. Saturday’s match against Oakland City University was also our Senior Day. I was hoping for a good performance for our seniors. It was a cold damp day and really the first one we have had this year as far as colder temperatures goes. We tried to get a good warm up so our blood would be moving, and we would be warm entering the match. We had switched our formation; a formation we had experimented with against Campbellsville. It was not a huge change in the system we had been teaching the girls just a couple of adjustments where we had players on the field. I really wanted us to commit more players forward in attacking and this formation allowed us to do so. In a match like this where I felt we would be the better team it seemed like a good time to do so. And we did generate more attacking opportunities and had players in dangerous positions to score however in the first half we were offside 11 times. We did not solve that problem. We still went into halftime 2-0 in large part because of Dana Ferguson who was creating great opportunities for herself and others. At half, we talked about the adjustments we needed to do in order to not be caught offside. It was not a just one problem and we talked about the different reasons we were getting caught offside. I also stressed to the team forget the score-line because not many would consider this a good half for us despite the score. The next 35 minutes were extremely good for us. We fixed many of the problems and were getting chance after chance. Only were caught offside 4 times 3 which were not. The 2 nd half we were attacking toward our side of the bench so I could see whether we were on or off. It was 6-0 with a little over 10 minutes left in the game and I decided to try and give 2 of our senior defenders a chance to score. We put them upfront as forward and had a good time watching them trying to score. Final score was 6-0. This week we are heading into matches that we must find a way to win. In our 3 victories we have outscored our opponents by a combine score of 16 goals and in 3 defeats have lost by a combine score of 22. Our success this year will hinge on our ability to win close matches and that will mean we will need to show more composure and determination in matches against quality opponents. With 8 matches left whether we can do this or not will determine what kind of season we have. All matches this week should be close that could go either way. This week we are at Milligan on Monday at 7 pm, Wednesday we have a big conferences match against our rival, Georgetown College at 2:30 at our place and Friday we travel to King College for a 1 pm kickoff.
Week 1 Corner - 09/04/05 |
