A team is held in high regard if a 7-2 win doesn’t seemgood enough.
That is exactly what happened to the 24th-ranked SMUwomen’s soccer team on Friday night. Held to just a 3-2 scorein the first half, the Mustangs scored four goals in the last 16minutes to defeat a young Sam Houston State team at Westcottfield.
SMU is now 3-1-1 for the young season while Sam Houston drops to1-3.
Last weekend, the Mustangs lost to No. 3 Santa Clara 2-1 indouble overtime and beat a 13th-ranked Stanford team 2-1 in theNotre Dame tournament. Freshmen Kimber and Krystal Bailey werenamed to the All-Tournament team.
All rankings are courtesy of the NSCAA/adidas poll. The Mustangsare also ranked 19th by SoccerBuzz.com and 25th bySoccerTimes.com.
SMU Head Coach John Cossaboon said the listless play in thefirst half was partially due to the big games last weekend.
“It’s part of being young,” Cossaboon said.”You respond to the level of the opponent. If you’reyoung and good, you can play with the top teams, and that’swhat we did last week.
“Sam Houston State is a growing team, a hard team, a lotof positive things, but we didn’t respect them enough comingout on the field.
“We played an average game in the beginning. We let themget in, we made it close and we brought all of it on ourselves justby not bringing our best game.”
But, Cossaboon said, senior midfielder Jill Heinemanndidn’t fall into the trap. Even when SMU was plodding its waythrough the first half, Heinemann was the main spark in themidfield, scoring two goals in the second half
“The goals were nice,” Heinemann said. “But Ithink that especially in the first half, passes weren’t on. Ithink we, and me especially, could have made more plays in thefirst half to make it a better game.”
Sophomore Ashley Watson was the only other Mustang with twopoints, assisting on goals by freshmen Autumn Browning and KimberBailey. Other SMU goal scorers included freshman Krystal Bailey,senior Erin MacCallum and sophomore Adria Campbell.
The Mustangs also put in freshman goaltender Ariel House for thefirst minutes of her college career against Sam Houston State.House seemed comfortable directing the defense but did give up theonly two goals of the game.
The first goal came in the 22nd minute, when senior AmandaJordan took down a Sam Houston player inside the box. Housedidn’t have a chance to stop the ensuing penalty kick.
The second goal was the result of a rookie mistake, as Housemade a mistake in throwing a ball at the edge of the 18-yard box,and Sam Houston’s Jo Fairclough was able to dribble in behindher.
“It was good that I got a chance to get out there and getsome minutes in,” House said. “I thought, besides theobvious mistake, it was pretty good. We didn’t do very goodat the beginning, but I think I did a pretty good job as far asorganizing the defense.”
Coach Cossaboon expects great things from his young net-minderas well.
“She’s a talented young freshman,” Cossaboonsaid. “Ariel got put in the mix of it. On the second goal,she knows she made a mistake, and she’ll never do it again.But this is what she had to go through, and I’m glad she wentthrough it tonight.
“If you see her in training, she’s awesome. Sowe’ve just got to get her more relaxed in the game andthat’ll come.”
This Friday, the Mustangs take on UCLA at Westcott field for agame at 7 p.m. UCLA was ranked third in the nation entering thisweekend, but lost to Maryland 2-1 and should slip when the newrankings are released later this week.
