SFA Plays Well in Exhibition Against TCU
3/28/2015 12:00:00 AM | Women's Soccer
NACOGDOCHES, Texas - The Stephen F. Austin women's soccer team gave TCU all it could handle on Saturday afternoon in a spring exhibition at SFA Soccer Field. Despite a back-and-forth affair, a second half goal by the Horned Frogs proved to the deciding factor in the 1-0 TCU win.
The Ladyjacks, who beat Navarro College 2-1 in their first exhibition of the spring, had plenty of great looks at goal and threatened in the box on numerous occasions. Madison Hall saw her rocket set piece just graze of the crossbar in the second half, Chantal Curry had a beautiful goal called back after an offside call while Amanda Doyle, Hanna Barker and a handful of others were dangerous in the offensive third throughout the game.
Both Lillie Ehlert and Allyson Smith had terrific saves in front of the net for SFA. Ehlert shut out the Horned Frogs in the first half as the teams went into the break tied 0-0. Smith got the nod in the second half and had two diving saves to keep TCU from scoring until late in the game.
The Ladyjacks will play their next three spring exhibitions on the road starting with SMU on Saturday, April 11 at Westcott Field in Dallas. That game is set to start at 1:00 p.m.
Postgame Quotes - Head Coach Wally Crittenden
On the overall performance of the team against TCU:
"TCU is good team. They're experienced, athletic and high pressing. It's a great opportunity to test our in-game learning because you don't have the opportunity to scout and you don't really have any preparation time - which is good. We need to be able to play teams and adjust on the go. We made a couple adjustments after the first 15 minutes and I thought we began to impose ourselves in possession and began to do some of the things we wanted to do. As we went into the second half we changed our shape, changed our personnel group to look at a couple different things.
Overall, I was very pleased with our competitive character and I was pleased with the areas that we had fine-tuned over this last week following Navarro. For a spring game, it was played at a very high level. The intensity, the execution and the ideas by both teams were tremendous. I feel very confident moving forward because everyone got a chance to prove themselves today. We'll go back and look at some tape and see where we need to go from here."
On the focus in training leading up to the next three exhibition games on the road:
"It is a very interesting time with spring break last week and Easter break coming up. I won't say it's tough to hit a rhythm but after spring break we had some fitness testing that we had to get in, while normally we wouldn't want to do it near a big game like today. We'll adjust our schedules with the break coming up next week. We'll take some rest now - the girls will have the rest of the weekend off - and then we'll train on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday next week. After the Easter break we'll turn our focus to SMU, which will be another great test on the road. I feel like we play well at home and have defined ourselves at home, and now we get a change to do that away."
-SFA-
