Looking at the numbers, one has to wonder how the Mississippi State women’s soccer team lost its fourth consecutive match on Sunday to the Samford Bulldogs. Much like the other three games, State outplayed its opponent and pretty much controlled the game. Unfortunately for the maroon and white Bulldogs, things didn’t wind up on their side when the final score was tallied up. The most lopsided stat was the shots. State held its opponent to only two shots in the first half and only six for the game. Meanwhile MSU had 24 shots in the contest, an extremely large number for a team that lost. Coach Neil McGuire said he was frustrated that the team was not able to put the ball in the net even though they are playing well.
“Once again we out-shot a team by a lot to a little and we come away losing. I really don’t have an explanation as to why it’s happening because we dominate the first half, and we had much of the play in the second half.”
Lately the team has fallen into a trap of giving up a goal and then giving up another one not very long after the first. This is something that plagued the Bulldogs again on Sunday as Samford put two goals in pretty quickly.
McGuire said, “It’s becoming a bit of an issue for us to lose a goal and lose one straight after that. Today it was a minute and 11 seconds between goals.”
Captain Elke D’Hollander said, “Coach (McGuire) told us that we were inconsistent about letting goals in. It’s not that we are not focused, we are trying but for some reason luck is not on our side.”
Of course scoring is the big issue when a team has as many shots on goal as State had. The Bulldogs also had 14 corner kicks to Samford’s one, and had less than half the number of fouls that Samford had. About the lack of scoring McGuire said, “I don’t really know what has to be done. I’m afraid I don’t have an answer. I don’t know if that makes me a bad coach but we are doing a lot of things right and we are just not getting any breaks. I’m not making excuses, we just can’t score.”
Freshman Betty Ann Casey scored State’s lone goal in the 77th minute on an assist from senior Jessica Kauffman. She talked about not getting any goals to fall. Casey said, “We try and try but we just got to keep doing it. We just have to keep trying in practice and out of practice.”
D’Hollander said, “We don’t have that look right now. Last week we out-shot Southwest Missouri but they still won. We don’t have that killer instinct there yet but we’re hoping to get that back and finish against SEC play.” The Bulldogs will look to end their longest losing streak since 1999 this Friday when they begin conference play against Arkansas.
D’Hollander said, “We’re excited about starting to play SEC games. We will continue to work hard and just hope our luck will change. We’ll try to get that go ahead goal and keep that goal and win.”
MSU fans are hoping the tables will turn for the Dawgs this weekend. The team has worked very hard, but it is frustrating to have opportunities to win games and not convert them.
State will begin its defense of the SEC West against the Razorbacks, and a win is certainly needed. Game time Friday is set for 3 p.m.