Aug. 27, 2006
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Columbia, Mo. – Despite an incredible advantage of shots on the offensive end, the USC women’s soccer team gave away an early goal in the second half and could not find the equalizer, falling to Iowa 1-0 on Sunday afternoon at the Tiger Invitational on the campus of the University of Missouri. The Gamecocks are now 0-2 on the season with Iowa improving to 1-1 on the year. Carolina returns to the Palmetto State for its home opener on Thursday, Aug. 31 at 7 pm vs. Francis Marion at Stone Stadium.
“We just have to finish and put away teams early,” said USC head coach Shelley Smith. “You don’t get points for possession. We dominated play, made some better decisions with the ball than on Friday, but we just couldn’t get the goal we needed.”
The shot advantage for the Gamecocks was close to a 5:1 ratio with Carolina finishing at 23 shots while the Hawkeyes ended the match with just five. The lone goal came at the 55:25 mark in the second half of play when Melisa Kaetterhenry scored on a counterattack from just inside the “18.” Carolina would have their chances in the rest of the second half but could not find the back of the net. Freshman forward Samantha Diaz-Matosas had four shots with sophomore forward Mary Worthen and junior midfielder Ashley Kirk tallying three apiece as well.
“The ball was turned over on the goal they scored, we got pulled over too much to one side, the recovery wasn’t there and they were able to score in transition,” said Coach Smith. “We have to have an urgency to score goals early. Some of our best chances came when we were put into pressure to score because we were down a goal. We hit the crossbar on one and some of our better chances were there at the end.”
Junior goalkeeper Laura Armstrong played all 90 minutes and finished with two saves in net for the Gamecocks. Iowa goalkeeper Ali Becker had six saves for the Hawkeyes.
Defenders Kimmy Gillespie and Blakely Mattern were named to the All-Tournament Team. This weekend was the first two games of Mattern’s career here at Carolina with Gillespie starting in the backline at defender for the first time in her career after two seasons at midfield.
South Carolina’s Thursday night home opener will feature live gametracker stats and live audio broadcast at uscsports.com.
