Soccer to play in tourney
Frogs look to rebound from SMU loss
By Olga Bograd
Skiff Staff

The women’s soccer team plans to incorporate what it learned from a recent loss to Southern Methodist in this weekend’s four-team tournament at Garvey-Rosenthal Soccer Stadium.

Scoring two goals was not enough to make history and defeat the Lady Mustangs, who have an overall record of 4-1, for the first time Tuesday, as the Frogs lost 4-2.

Head coach David Rubinson said despite the loss, the team, which is 2-2 for the season, dominated throughout the match. The Frogs gave up three goals in the last 23 minutes of play.

“Other than the scoreboard, we felt like we were the better team,” Rubinson said. “We did enough right things to win and we’ve got to continue to improve on that.”

Sophomore midfielder Moran Lavi said the Frogs could have easily beaten SMU because of their aggression, but their defense could not repel SMU’s counterattacks.

In practice this week, the team focused on fixing what went wrong in Tuesday’s game. Lavi said the team worked hard in Thursday’s practice.

“We practiced defending corner-kicks and the coach talked to us and explained how to explore the space in the middle to improve our defense,” Lavi said. “We also practiced counterattacks and how to put more pressure on the ball more effectively.”

Rubinson said the team spent Thursday’s practice improving its defense and expects the improvement to continue.

“One of the things we worked really hard on is defensive transition,” Rubinson said. “(We worked on) getting behind the ball defensively so that we’re not nearly as eager to give up goals, just so we’re very aware and very prepared and very organized to keep the ball out of the back of our net.”

The Frogs will play their first game of the tournament against Oklahoma at 4:30 p.m. today and will play Baylor at 1 p.m. Saturday. Baylor will play SMU at 2 p.m. Friday.

Rubinson said he looks forward to these games as great practice for the team.

“These are both very good teams out of the Big 12,” Rubinson said.