The Mississippi State University women’s soccer team hosted both South Alabama and Louisiana Tech this past weekend. Coming off of their best performance of the season at Arkansas State, where MSU won 5-1, the Bulldogs could not capitalize on enough of their opportunities on Friday night as they fell to South Alabama 2-0. However, on the quick turn around the Bulldogs were able to bounce back to defeat Louisiana Tech just two days later with a final score of 2-1.
Head Coach Aaron Gordon said overall he was pleased with his team’s play over the weekend and in particular liked how the squad responded to his efforts to push them after the loss against South Alabama.
“I kind of challenged the team for this game (against Louisiana Tech). Sunday’s a hard day anyway. You play back-to-back and don’t have much rest, so you have to be mentally tough. I told them, ‘look we can control our effort and attitude.’ They responded as well as I could have hoped for.”
The Bulldogs began Friday night with a nice first-half performance that saw them have the advantage in shots on goal. The squad unfortunately was not able to convert any of these chances to goals and had nothing to ultimately show for their first-half dominance.
The second half turned out to be an entirely different story, which saw South Alabama’s Charde Hannah convert two chances into goals for her team. The first came on a breakaway, off of a defensive lapse on the part of the Bulldogs, which Hannah converted rather easily.
The second came at the very end of the game when Hannah was able to flick the ball over the head of the MSU keeper with just 12 seconds left in the match. The majority of the Bulldog players were pushed up the field trying to find the equalizer, so in effect, they were left vulnerable to a counter attack goal.
Gordon pointed to a lack of following through with the game plan, which led to the team’s downfall.
“When I look at the game, it boils down to executing what we needed to do from the game plan,” he said. “They did exactly what we thought they were going to do. Unfortunately, we couldn’t execute it in the first half and missed a lot of opportunities.”
Just a day later, the Bulldogs took the field to take on Louisiana Tech on a very humid Sunday afternoon in Starkville. The game turned out to be a competitive contest, with both teams creating a slew of chances throughout the match. Fortunately for MSU, senior forward Shannen Jainudeen struck quickly for the home team just six minutes into the game. She was able to receive a pass from the midfield, turn and rifle a shot pass the out stretched keeper to place the ball in the bottom right-hand corner.
The rest of the first half saw Louisiana Tech come close to scoring twice, once even hitting the post from close range. The referee proved to be very controlling in the game, as he issued two yellow cards in the first half to a player on each of the respected teams.
Just as MSU struck quickly in the first half, Louisiana Tech did the same to begin the second half. Kathryn Sloan was able to power a shot right over the top of MSU keeper Rhylee Decrane into the upper right-hand corner. This goal really opened up the game, as the rest of the match was very fast paced and filled with a lot of chances for both teams.
The deadlock was finally broken in the 59th minute on an MSU free kick. Morgan Ferrera was able to break free in the box and head the cross into the right side of the goal.
Ferrera described the goal as being something that was a direct result of a week’s worth of practice.
“I knew the ball was coming my way. We worked in practice all week of me being on the back post, and it was a perfect ball,” she said. “I redirected it well and got lucky to see it go in.”
 Louisiana Tech had a couple of opportunities to level the score before the full time whistle, but were ultimately unable to put the ball in the back of the net. The final score finished up 2-1 in favor of the home Bulldogs, improving their overall record to 3-4 on the season thus far.
Freshman Mallory Eubanks, who finished with two assists in the game on Sunday, viewed the weekend as a whole as a positive step in the right direction.
“I think we did well and improved a lot from Friday to Sunday; looking at our mistakes we made on Friday and moving on to improve on Sunday, which was good.”
 Looking ahead to Friday’s SEC opener against Ole Miss, Gordon said he knows that his team is coming in as the underdogs, but he doesn’t necessarily view that as a bad thing.  
“They’re not playing players who are young but rather that have two or three years under their belt already and that’s OK. They should be expected to win, and if we were in Vegas they would be the favorites 100 percent. That’s OK though, I would rather be the underdog right now and the good thing is we’ve got to watch them a lot, and we really have something to build on with this game, which I’m happy about,” he said.
SEC play gets underway Friday night at 6 p.m. at the Mississippi State soccer field, as MSU hosts the Ole Miss Rebels in the traditional rivalry match up.