The ninth ranked Memphis women’s soccer team played its first home game of the American conference slate against UAB Thursday, splitting the points with a 1-1 tie.
Despite outshooting the Blazers 16-3, the Tigers had difficulties breaking through the zone defense UAB was employing and only put three shots on goal.
“They had so many numbers behind the ball,” Memphis head coach Brooks Monaghan said after the game. “It made it very, very difficult but we just have to be able to solve different problems and (that’s) the problem they presented us.”
The draw moves Memphis’ record on the season to 7-0-2 and puts the team third in the American conference standings. It also extends the Tigers’ home unbeaten streak to a whopping 34 games.
In the first half, it was a war of attrition. There were only a combined four shots for both teams, and the best chance Memphis had to break the stalemate at this point were a few corner kicks, but nothing found the back of the net.
In these types of games, it can be demoralizing to go into half with so little offensive production but sophomore forward Alex Mackay said that this wasn’t the case for Memphis:
“There’s a lot of positive in the game, we can’t just put ourselves down,” she said about the team’s halftime conversation. “We were obviously like ‘We need to be better,’ but it was stay on the positive, get wider (on the field) and move, get them to come out of their zones.”
The scoring opened up for both sides in the second period as in the 49th minute, junior UAB defender Ava Mills was able to sneak the ball past Abby Kudla, who was in the goal for Memphis, to give the visitors a 1-0 lead.
This was the first time the Tigers had trailed all season, and they had about 40 minutes to find an answer on the scoreboard. Every time Memphis surged forward, the Blazers would collapse their defense on the ball and deny their opponents.
This pattern continued for quite a while until the 72nd minute, when Mackay found some daylight in the box and bounced the ball off the right post to the back of the net to tie everything up at one point.
From there, the Tigers continued their aggressive play in an effort to pull out the win. Memphis had their chances late, highlighted by senior forward Flavie Dubé’s one-on-one chance with the Blazers’ keeper in the 88th minute but the goalie got to the ball first and the match ended in a draw.
“We have a big target on our back,” Monaghan said. “You’re going to get everybody’s best effort and there’s going to be teams in this league that don’t want to run with us, they don’t want to open the game up, so they want to make sure they always have numbers behind the ball and that’s what (UAB) did. They’re celebrating a tie, and we feel like it’s a bit of a defeat, and that’s okay.”
The Tigers will look to bounce back from this result when they play host to the USF Bulls at 7 p.m. on Thursday back at the Park Ave. Campus.
