Lady Soccer 2015

So, not only does the BYU football team win in the last second with a Hail Mary, the BYU Lady Soccer team win with a last second, looooong distance kick into the goal.

The BYU Sports Nation "karma" is for real! Bizzy Phillips was on BYU Sports Nation yesterday before the game and they even told her about the good karma of appearing on their show. And then she scores like this!!

The Cougars finally did put a ball on frame in the 87th minute on a Phillips free kick from about 45 yards away. Utah State had seven fouls and one yellow card in the second half alone, and penalties proved costly. Phillips fired a quality ball on net that looked to be intended for Ashley Hatch as it left her foot. Instead, the ball missed everyone, bounced once at the goal line and ended up in the Aggies’ net for the game winner.

http://www.deseretnews.com/article/865636529/BYU-soccer-late-Phillips-goal-gives-No-5-BYU-the-win-over-Utah-State.html?pg=all



If anyone has a video of that goal I WANT TO SEE IT!!!!

The USU game was nerve racking. I was at the game and the last time I went they ended up in a 0-0 tie. I was starting to worry this one was going the same way and that I was a curse. ;) Thankfully and finally,the ball went in the net. The UNLV game should be different. They aren't a good team. We SHOULD score all over them. I sure hope Hatch can get her shot back. She seems to be struggling some. It's great to see more people on here talking BYU Soccer, because I think they deserve being talked about.

I hope to see Hatch's sister get into the game and some of the other freshwomen.

I did watch the BYU - USU game on BYU TV DVR or whatever it's called. Wow, BYU dominated that game but just struggled getting a goal. Too many times they shot from distance or shot right at the keeper. They should have won 10-0. An amazing goal that some would call luck, but I call it the BYU Sports Nation Karma. A lot of talent on that team.

I was disappointed this week that the team scored so few goals on two teams that we, seemingly, should have scored a lot of goals on. However, I attended both games with Sarah Chambers Gardner's dad (he has a perspective that most of us don't), and he pointed out that they had played four games in eight days. They were TIRED. While they won both (Yay!), the national coaches didn't look favorably on their wins, and dropped them three spots in the rankings.



I am glad to see some of the other players stepping up as Hatch struggles to get the ball in the net. . I understand that, at times, she gets down on herself and, if you watched the UNLV game, you could see it in her countenance. Hatch is a great player and scorer and I wish she could see that she has nothing to get down on herself about. Hopefully, she will get a goal and it will give her confidence again. She just needs to figure out what in her mechanics are causing the misses.



I am excited to watch the game against Oregon State and hope they win handily. By the way, has anyone else noticed that five out of eight of their games (six out of nine, if you count the exhibition game against Arizona) have been against Pac-12 teams, one of the strongest conferences in the nation for soccer, with all but the Stanford game being wins, and even that one was close, a good showing.



Last but not least, kudos to the defense for allowing ONE goal so far this season. Boaz is outstanding in goal and, even though there have been a few mistakes among the defenders, none have been critical errors and the defense has, overall, been very strong.

BYU's latest rankings



Sept. 15: NSCAA Coaches: 8th -- A new one will come out today. We should move up

Sept. 21: RPI: 3rd

Sept. 21: Top Drawer Soccer: 5th



The RPI is very important in women's soccer and is even more influential in setting NCAA tournament seedings than in basketball. As of right now BYU is in position for a #1 seed like they got 3 years ago. The WCC is a fairly strong league this year so they should be able to stay up there pretty high as long as they keep winning.



http://www.ncaa.com/rankings/soccer-women/d1/ncaa-womens-soccer-rpi" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;



http://www.topdrawersoccer.com/college-soccer-national-rankings/women" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Ranked 6th now. Two road games this week. Matches at Cal Poly San Luis Obispo and Long Beach State, Thursday and Saturday, respectively. I hope they got some of their goal-scoring bugs worked out. Go Cougs!

Conference play starts tonight at Gonzaga with Portland on Saturday. The WCC is quite good this year. Santa Clara is actually thought by some right now to be in a better spot for a high seed in the NCAA tournament than BYU, even though BYU is higher in the polls. BYU has been good, but they still have some work to do to get them where they want to be seeded in the NCAAs. The non-conference schedule made them play bunches of games together in short amounts of time, and I think they got a little tired. Also, almost every non-conference opponent was good.

We better get a seed. We played several PAC teams and beat them all but Stanford.

scott715 wrote:
We better get a seed. We played several PAC teams and beat them all but Stanford.

We will if we take care of business in the conference. The WCC has some good teams this year, so we still have an opportunity to pick up more good wins. The Santa Clara game looks like the biggest one. I would like for BYU to put more shots into the net. Last night we had a good number of shots on goal and forced Gonzaga's keeper to make a lot of saves. Hopefully more of those will start going in soon. One thing that helps is that BYU has proven to be very hard to score against this year even with the tough schedule they've played.

What have given up this year. 2 or 3 goals so far. Just learned that Hatch is out for a month with a knee injury. Not good news.

BYU's RPI IS #4. As long as we continue to win, we will get a good seed in the NCAA Tournament. The trick is to continue winning. Without Hatch that gets tougher, especially with games against Portland, Santa Clara and Pepperdine still to be played during the time she is out (Which is, for all intents and purposes, the rest of the regular season. Perhaps we can get her back for the LMU and/or St. Mary's games). We've got to do better in scoring goals than we have lately. The good teams are going to score goals, even against our stifling defense. We have to get more. We have to pick up our game.

Good 2-1 win tonight. I missed our first goal, but Gomes' goal was great. Too bad for the own-goal. Could have shut them out. I had someone tell me it was a deflection, but it was clearly an own-goal. Anyway, good win over perennial power Portland.

Portland used to be dominate. I don't think they have beaten us. Good win but I wish Portland would improve to make the league better.



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Pulled out the win against SD. We had like 49 shots on goal and a ton of corner kicks but it wasn't until the 83 minute that we scored to win 1-0.


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Another win on goals from Gomes (I knew after last season that she was going to be really good, although there are times that her play is a little lazy) and Murphy-Vasconcelos. I have some concerns though. They can't seem to break two goals. They scored two early goals, then didn't scored in the second half. Even Portland beat them 4-0. We as the fifth-ranked team should have beat them by more than two goals, especially on our home turf.

These next two against USF and Santa Clara this week are big. Santa Clara is high in the rpi and will go down as a very good win if we can get it. USF is a good team that beat Santa Clara earlier this season. We essentially wrap up the league this week if we win these two because I don't think we lose at home after this.

The Cougars did not look good in their loss to San Francisco tonight. After the First 15 minutes, they looked laxidaisical and sloppy in passing and overall performance, while San Francisco was sharp and aggressive. Gomes, in particular, looked like a lazy kid, letting passes go by her and not aggressively pursuing them. She had a few times that, if she had been aggressive, she could have scored, or at least made a try at it, but didn't make much effort. I am very frustrated with this team tonight. They knew they had to be really on, on this trip. They weren't tonight. Very frustrated. I'm sure the Coach Rockwood is as well.

SkystheLimit wrote:
The Cougars did not look good in their loss to San Francisco tonight. After the First 15 minutes, they looked laxidaisical and sloppy in passing and overall performance, while San Francisco was sharp and aggressive. Gomes, in particular, looked like a lazy kid, letting passes go by her and not aggressively pursuing them. She had a few times that, if she had been aggressive, she could have scored, or at least made a try at it, but didn't make much effort. I am very frustrated with this team tonight. They knew they had to be really on, on this trip. They weren't tonight. Very frustrated. I'm sure the Coach Rockwood is as well.

USF was the first decent team BYU had played in a while and the first one after Hatch's injury. They did come out very flat against USF. They played better against Santa Clara. But from these two games especially it seems to me that they really miss Hatch. She would command so much attention from opponents that it made things a lot easier for the rest of the attackers, and they seem to be having a tough time adjusting. Hopefully she comes back soon.