File- UConn keeps the ball out of reach of an Eastern Michigan defender on Sept. 14, 2018. (Nicholas Hampton/ The Daily Campus)
The UConn women’s soccer team had another tough away trip this past weekend when they lost 4-1 to SMU. The Huskies are now 2-9 on the season and 0-2 in conference play.
Before the road trip to Texas, UConn’s head coach Margaret Rodriguez talked about how conference play was a clean start for the team.
“It’s a clean slate for us,” Rodriguez said. “We’re taking it one game at a time. We’re going to focus on what we’ve been working on our last couple of weeks. It’s just mentality and trying to compete for every ball. We have to win 50-50 balls.”
On Thursday Sept. 20 the Huskies lost their first conference game 2-3 to Houston.
All of the Mustang’s goals on Sunday were scored by different players with the first goal of the match coming at 12:10 from SMU’s Allie Thornton. The goal was Thornton’s sixth on the season.
UConn’s Elena Santos scored an equalizing goal a little more than three minutes later for her second goal of the season.
The last goal of the first half was scored by SMU’s Courtney Sebazco with an assist from Haley Thompson. The goal was also Sebazco’s sixth on the season.
Going into halftime the Huskies were down by only one goal. However, UConn seemed to deflate in the second half as they were held scoreless.
SMU’s Katina Tsapos scored her first goal of the season off an assist by Blair Thorpe at 76:42. Less than three minutes later the Mustang’s scored for the final time with a goal from Ale Winn off of another assist from Thompson. It was Winn’s first goal of the season.
After a rough start to conference play it’s helpful to look back at what Coach Rodriguez has said about the Huskies’ matches this season.
“Right now, every game is big for us,” Rodriguez said. “There’s no gimme game. Every single game we need to show up and we need to play so we’re treating it one game at a time. …So whoever we’re playing, home or away, we need to show up and perform because we don’t have the luxury or ability to kind of just focus on one opponent and not another right now.”
The Huskies will return home to Storrs this week when they play conference foe USF on Thursday at 7 p.m.
Mariana Dominguez is a staff writer for The Daily Campus. She can be reached via email at mariana.dominguez@uconn.edu.