Aug. 24, 2012
LEXINGTON, Ky. – The University of Kentucky women’s soccer team got goals from junior Ashley VanLandingham and sophomore Arin Gilliland Friday night in a 2-1 win over in-state foe Eastern Kentucky to move the Wildcats to 2-0-0 overall for the fourth-straight year.
“One of the things you have to realize, and I said this before the game, is that EKU is incredibly well coached,” UK head coach Jon Lipsitz said. “I thought they did a great job. They played a little bit of low pressure up top and their back line was very high. Tactically, it gave us almost no room to play. We don’t like to play the ball over the top and the end result was that we had too. We had to play a little bit more direct and all the credit is to (EKU) coach (Lindsay) Basalyga and her staff for making it so difficult on us.”
The opening goal in the game came in the 22nd minute off the foot of Ashley VanLandingham. Standing 25 yards away from goal, the Asheville, N.C., native launched a low, driving ball into the mouth of the goal that found its way into the back of the net on the far post. The goal was VanLandingham’s second in as many games and gives her three career goals.
Kentucky would extend its lead to 2-0 in the 53rd minute when Lexington, Ky., native Arin Gilliland headed in a Danielle Krohn corner kick on the near post, tallying her first goal of the season and the golden goal for the Wildcats.
EKU would chart its only goal of the game on an own goal in the 69th minute. Eastern took a ball deep in on the end line, swept it back across goal and hit Natalie Horner’s thigh, before trickling in far post for the goal.
UK dominated the pace of play, holding most of the possession, outshooting EKU 9-1 and winning the corner kick battle 6-0.
With the win, UK moves to 4-0-0 in the all-time series with Eastern Kentucky, posting a pair of 2-1 decisions over the Colonels in the last two years.
“A big part of how we evaluate our team is how coachable we were and the leadership that we had. Quite honestly, tonight we didn’t solve problems well. We talked about that at halftime we (the coaches) were doing a lot of the communicating. I would rather sit down and do nothing, but unfortunately today we had to get up and do a lot more as a staff than we would have liked too. We have to get better,” Lipsitz said.
Kentucky will play host to the second-annual Tropical Smoothie Invitational at the UK Soccer Complex next weekend. The Wildcats welcome UNC-Greensboro, Southeast Missouri State and Louisville in a tournament that will kick off Friday Aug. 31 at 5:00 p.m. ET. Louisville and SEMO will tangle in the front end of the doubleheader at 5:00, with the Wildcats and Spartans concluding the day one action with a 7:30 p.m. ET scheduled start.
For continuing coverage of UK women’s soccer, log on to UKathletics.com.
