Sept. 6, 2009
Despite a season high 12 shots, the Kentucky women’s soccer team couldn’t muster enough offense in playing to a 0-0 double-overtime tie with the Akron Zips (2-0-1).
Even though UK goalie Sydney Hiance and the Wildcat defense notched their second shutout in three matches and have allowed only one goal in that same time frame, the Cats are still looking for the offensive spark to get to the next level. Today Giuleana Lopez showed a glimmer of offensive hope for UK taking a game high eight shots, one shy of her career best.
The Wildcats (2-1-1) had the first legitimate scoring opportunity in the 19th minute. Lopez took a shot off a free kick from 25 yards out that hit off the right post and rolled out of bounds.
Lopez had another golden opportunity two minutes later when she found a loose ball in front of the Akron goal and fired a shot from 15 yards, but Akron goalie Jeny Wolbert was there for the save.
The Zips threatened to take a 1-0 lead into the locker room off a corner kick inside the final minute. Katelyn Hausfel sent the ball towards the back post where Kaitlin Flanagan elevated and got a head on the ball, but Hiance was there to pull the shot in and preserve the shutout.
“Today was an opportunity for us to get better moving forward in the season,” said UK head coach Jon Lipsitz. “Akron did a great job of sitting back and we didn’t handle it well. We’re going to have to improve at a faster rate than this to be successful. I don’t think we played well today; we have to do a better job handling some great tactics by Akron and show a higher quality in our technical play.”
One positive Lipsitz took from the match was that the Wildcats managed to get all 23 healthy field players into the match.
“I’m very excited we were able to play everybody that was healthy and able to play. We cleared the benched and that’s always a special thing for everybody to get in. We played 24 players today and that’s very important for our team going forward. One of things we want to do is develop a deeper bench and we can’t do that unless we play a deeper bench. Today we made the effort to get everybody into the game and we’ll continue to do our best at that.”
UK finished the match with a season high 12 shots to Akron’s five, and managed five corner kicks to the Zips three. With the shutout, Hiance moved to a tie for fourth on Kentucky’s all-time shutout list while lowering her goals average to 0.47.
The Wildcats take to the road for the first time this season on Wednesday, as they head to Morehead State to take on the Golden Eagles.
