Texas Tech Athletics
Missouri
Tech Drops Final Home Match to Missouri
October 24, 2010 | Women's Soccer
Oct. 24, 2010
LUBBOCK, Texas - In its last home game of the regular season, the Texas Tech soccer team fell to Missouri, 5-2, at the John Walker Soccer Complex on Sunday night.
Missouri (7-8-2/5-4 Big 12) came out strong and scored two early goals to put Tech (11-6-1/4-4-1 Big 12) under pressure early.
"You know you have to weather the storm with Missouri early on and we didn't do that very well and found ourselves down two pretty quickly," said head coach Tom Stone. "But then the game settled down, as we knew it would, and we got into a pretty decent rhythm and scored two nice goals of our own."
Tech's first goal came in the 26th minute when junior Casey McCall finished a cross from sophomore Sarah Ellison who received it just outside the six from freshman Jessica Disabella. It marked McCall's third goal of the season.
Eight minutes later a counter attack by Tech led by Disabella, who got the ball to senior Leanne Mihelich just outside the 18. Mihelich ran at the retreating MU backline, faked the shot, chopped her defender and hit a left-footed blast in the near left-handed corner for her second score of the year.
The score was tied 2-2 at the half.
In the second half, Missouri only waited three minutes to put themselves up 3-2 on a Tech turnover in the middle third that led to a Missouri counter attack.
"We tried to emphasize middle-third giveaways and how important it is to protect the ball in that part of the field. It's something Missouri preys on and they punished us for that turnover," stated Stone.
Once again the game settled down and both teams traded shots and counter attacks. Then in the 70th minute, the Tigers got a serve in from the right flank and Sarah Thune headed the ball in to go up 4-2.
"To be honest, at 4-2 we didn't feel out of it, we had plenty of game and we've come back before. We had a couple great chances including one on the back post to Dawn Ward. If that goes in, it's game on. That was a big momentum swing of the game when that didn't go in," Stone said.
Mizzou got its last score in the 73rd minute on a free kick.
"That goal was the worst goal of the night," commented Stone. "The free kick was hit right at our wall and it found its way underneath our players and into the unprotected part of the net."
The Tigers outshot the Red Raiders 18-16, and connected on five of seven shots-on-goal.
"It's not often you see seven shots-on-goal and five go in. They had an impressive strike rate tonight," said Stone.
With the win on Friday over Iowa State, Tech has now qualified for the Big 12 Championship and will play at Baylor on Fri., Oct. 29, at 7 p.m. in the regular-season finale to determine seeding for the conference championship.
