Mavs fall in NSIC Tournament Quarterfinals
The Minnesota State women’s soccer team suffered a 2-1 defeat to Concordia University, St. Paul in the NSIC Tournament Quarterfinals Monday.
It was the Mavericks’ third defeat of the season, and first at home.
Concordia-St. Paul outshot the Mavs 6-3 in the first half, and in the 30th minute the Golden Bears got a breakthrough and took a 1-0 lead thanks to their leading scorer, Katie Anderson.
There were several stoppages in the first half due things such as fouls, and the ball continuously hitting wires in the Maverick All-Sports Dome. Assistant coach Elizabeth Vetter said she felt these things disrupted the Mavs’ flow.
“We said there are a lot of external factors that affected the play today, opposed to just controlling what we can control. Anytime there’s a stoppage of play, that kind of dismantles the flow of what we’re trying to get into. I think that was maybe a bigger role than we would have liked it to be,” Vetter said.
After going a goal behind, the referee’s halftime whistle was what the Mavs needed to hear so they could regroup.
“We had lost our composure in the first half toward the end after that happened. We just had to kind of get a reset button at the break to kind of refocus and then I thought we started the second half pretty well,” Vetter said.
In the second half, the Mavs generated 11 shots and forced the Golden Bears’ goalkeeper to make five saves. The Mavs got an equalizing goal in the 75th minute after Allie Williams slotted home her penalty kick.
The Mavs only kept it level for six minutes before Corynn Grabau gave the Golden Bears a 2-1 lead in the 81st minute.
Despite the loss, Vetter said she felt like the team did a good job of executing the game plan.
“We executed most of what we wanted to do. Our game plan was to play our game in our style and we did that and we stuck to that. Obviously made a few adjustments here and there to try to help and to kind of relate to what they were doing to us. I think for the most part, we were dangerous in our game plan. Unfortunately, the looks that we gave up just happened to go in the goal,” Vetter said.
A change of formation for the Mavs meant players weren’t able to react quickly enough to prevent the game-winning goal for the Golden Bears after they lost possession in their own third.
“At the end, we made a formational change and just kind of got caught off guard. We had most of our players in attack and we weren’t able to recover as nicely, to get numbers behind the ball as much as we would have liked, and she had a great shot right outside the 18,” Vetter said.
The Mavs will now turn their focus to the NCAA Tournament.
“Heart-wrenching result today. We’ll take some time to heal up and set our sights on getting ready for the NCAA tournament,” head coach Brian Bahl said in a press release posted on the Mavericks Athletics website.
Using this defeat as a learning opportunity for the NCAA Tournament was part of the message given to the team after the game.
“The message is feel what we’re feeling for a couple of days, but then certainly we need to turn around and we need to be able to put this behind us and focus on what’s ahead. We need to be able to learn, lean on the experience and hopefully move forward in a better way,” Vetter said.
The Mavs will find out who their next opponent will be during the NCAA Selection Show on the NCAA website Nov. 13.
Header Photo: The Mavericks’ next opponent will be determined in the NCAA selection show on the NCAA website on November 13th at 5:30 p.m. (Courtesy Maverick Athletics)
Write to Mohamed Warsame at mohamed.warsame@mnsu.edu