After a disappointing tie with Jacksonville State Tuesday night, the Bulldogs (4-4-2) return home tonight to take on divisional foe Arkansas (5-4-1).
Arkansas sits in second place in the SEC Western Division after defeating Vanderbilt 2-1 and tying Kentucky 1-1.
Arkansas will bring an explosive offense that leads the SEC in goals with 24 (2.40 goals per game). Sarah Gwisdala leads the attack with six goals.
“This weekend is very crucial for us and I think that we need to be offensively dominant because from here on out is nothing but SEC games,” forward Betty Ann Casey said. “We need to be more aware of our offensive opportunities and capitalize on them because we need two W’s this weekend.”
State’s Sunday contest will feature an LSU Lady Tigers (5-5-0) team that is 0-2 in the SEC, last place in the Western Division and coming off losses to Kentucky (2-0) and Vanderbilt (1-0) over the weekend.
The Lady Dawgs shouldn’t encounter many problems with an LSU club whose offense and defense ranks in the bottom half of every major statistical category.
“We’re approaching these games with tons of confidence,” head coach Neil MacDonald said. “We’ve seen them play and I think that we can match up very well with both of them.”
The Bulldogs are coming off an opening conference weekend in which they were beaten by Tennessee 3-0 and earned a 1-0 overtime win over the Georgia Bulldogs Sunday afternoon.
Despite the tough loss to the Lady Vols, MacDonald said he was pleased with last weekend’s performance.
“Georgia was ranked something like 50th and we were 119th, so I think that gives the girls an idea of what they are capable of,” MacDonald said. “I think it was a wonderful weekend and everyone kind of got their feet wet and now knows what it takes to compete.”