Offense Erupts in Lady Jacket Win (10/6/05)
Box
Score
BILLINGS, MT – One early goal and a barrage
of goals in the middle of the game added up to a 5-1 win for the
Montana State-Billings women’s soccer team over Dallas Baptist
Thursday. The win improved MSU Billings to 8-2-1 overall while
dropping Dallas Baptist to 5-4-0.
“I thought our offense looked pretty good
today,” said Yellowjacket coach Don Trentham. “We still have to
tidy things up in the back. It’s funny to say that because we
only allowed four shots, but I didn’t think we looked as good in
the back as we should. As a result of us not being sharp back
there, I don’t think we possessed the ball as well as we have in
the past. However, our attack was the best it’s looked all
season.”
The Yellowjackets’ Ally
Stroup (Jr., Ojai, CA) opened the scoring just 70 seconds into
the match when she weaved through four defenders and then beat
Patriots goalkeeper Maresa Pittman. The goal at 1:10 was the
second fastest goal scored from the start of a game in school
history.
The game went scoreless for the next 42:32
before Brittney Sandau (So., Billings, MT) scored just before the
half, giving the Yellowjackets a 2-0 advantage. Sandau took a
pass from Chelsea Libby (Fr., Puyallup, WA) at about midfield and simply
outran the defense down the left side of the field.
“There wasn’t anyone in front of me,” said
Sandau. “When Chelsea passed me the ball I decided to take it to
the goal. Nobody stopped me.”
MSU Billings broke the game open with three
goals in the span of fourteen and a half minutes in the second
half. Defender Vanessa Edwards (So., Kent, WA) started the roll with her
first goal of the season—and her second collegiate goal—at 58:02.
The Jackets passed the ball quickly from Melissa Carlson (Fr., Renton, WA) to Libby to Edwards standing
20 yards in front of the goal. Edwards one-timed it to the back
of the net in a blink of an eye for a 3-0 lead.
Sandau scored her second goal of the game
about six minutes later for a 4-0 Yellowjacket lead. It was
Sandau’s eighth goal of the season, tying Stroup for the team
lead. Sandau was assisted by a nice through ball from Lacey Albrent (Sr., Ojai, CA).
“Lacey chipped it over the defense to me,”
said Sandau. “I made a run to the inside. I just went around one
defender and shot from 15 yards and beat the goalkeeper to the
left.”
Mandy Ploskonka (Fr., Federal Way, WA) capped the Yellowjacket
scoring with her second goal of the season at 72:31. She boomed
the shot from about 25 yards, sending it out of the reach of
Pittman. The Patriots erased the shutout with less than five
minutes remaining when Kim Wepler scored off a crossing pass from
Crystal Foster. MSU Billings out-shot the Patriots 23-4 overall
and 11-4 on shots on goal.
The Yellowjackets leave conference and
regional play for a pair of games against NAIA teams next week.
They will host Rocky Mountain College on Wednesday and Carroll
College on Saturday. The game against Rocky kicks off at 3:30
p.m. Saturday’s match starts at 1:00. MSU Billings will finish
the regular season with three games in Texas—two of them against
conference teams—at the end of October and a season finale at
Rocky Mountain on October 29.
“We’re just trying to keep up the intensity,”
Sandau said of the upcoming stretch run of the season. “We like
to have hard practices so we don’t get out of the rhythm of the
game mentality. We always have to keep things competitive. We
have to use the Carroll and Rocky games as preparation for the
conference games. We have to play really good games in those
games because it will affect us later in Texas.”
“It was really nice today to go out and beat
a conference opponent like we did,” added Trentham. “One of our
goals today was to secure a spot in the conference tournament. In
terms of the rest of the season we’ll approach every game as an
important game. Our goal as a team is to be the best team in the
conference and have a chance to go to the NCAA Tournament. In
order to achieve those goals, we have a lot of important games
remaining on our schedule.” |
