Welcome back, students! I hope everyone had a low stress and HIGH energy syllabus week, and maybe got out to catch the fantastic matches put on by the soccer team! WSU had 2 home games, one against the Montana Grizzlies on Thursday and one against the Idaho Vandals on Sunday.
The Grizzlies and Cougs were coming off very different previous games, with Montana getting an upset on our beloved Beavs 3-0 and the Cougs unable to capitalize in a 0-1 loss to the Boilermakers. The upset the Grizzlies put together was apparently enough for the Big Sky Conference to post about it and call out the Pac-2! But the Cougs, regardless of whether or not they saw that rage bait inducing post, came out fiery and furious. After some initial lulls, they pounced at the Grizzlies early with a 22nd minute TRIPLE header goal scored by Reagan Kotschau, with Reese Tappan and Maggie Mace getting assists for the first two headers. Not sure I’ve ever seen that in a game before!
The Cougs continued pouring the cheese heavy on the Grizzlies, with a 40th minute high arcing shot from the freshman Kendall Campbell that bounced off the Grizzly keeper’s hand and into the corner of the net. 2-0 at the half. The Cougs kept attacking, getting as close as hitting and rattling the top right corner of the frame hard enough to be heard down in Stevenson on the south side of campus! And to put the honey on top of this sweet Grizzly home opener, in the 82nd minute Grayson Lynch made a miraculous streaking run along the goal line to cross it over JUST before she fell out of bounds. Raniyah Burton was patiently waiting in the box to receive it and she expertly placed it to the side of a stunned and frozen goalkeeper who didn’t even have a chance to move. 3-0, curtains closed, back into hibernation you go, Grizzlies.
Notable Stats:
- The Cougs have outscored the Grizzlies 20-2 in their last 5 games.
- Nadia Cooper reached 169 saves in this match, putting her 6th all time as a Coug.
- 4th largest crowd ever for the Cougs at Lower Soccer Field, at 2,626 fantastic fans.
- Coolest bucket hats that have ever existed given away to many of said 2000+ fans.
Sunday’s game was against our next door neighbor, the Idaho Vandals. What transpired was an absolute SPANKING, regardless of the final score of 2-1. Examples of this include some ALARMING disparities. The Cougs logged 24 total shots in the game…the Vandals logged 1. The Cougs tallied 15 total corner kicks…the Vandals logged 1! It wasn’t even close! And it SHOULD’VE been 3-1 as the final score, but the Pac-12 (shocker) referees missed a goal put in by Grayson Lynch with a tap after a shot went off the crossbar and landed to her, but the goalie shielded the ball enough with her body that she was able to quickly smack it back across somehow without the “very sharp eagle-eyed” officials from noticing that it rolled completely across the line.
Regardless, just 10 minutes after that in the 29th, Jenna Studer forced in a goal off of a punch clear out attempt by the Idaho keeper during one of our MANY corner kicks to take the lead 1-0. The rest of the first half saw a bunch more WSU control, but was hindered heavily by a card happy ref who wanted desperately to try and keep the crowd and the WSU bench out of the game. 5 yellow cards ended up being given out to WSU, with two being for the bench chirpers and 3 for “too physical” play by our dominant Cougs. Anyhoo, they went in to the second half and Idaho came out pressing a little bit more, and it paid off when a ball lofted into our defensive third and ping ponged around until it fell down to Margo Schoesler’s foot who made an IMMEDIATE 180 and hit a curving strike around Nadia into the right corner to make it 1-1. Honestly, a really crazy shot and one that deserved to go in. What is really fascinating is that that was the Vandals ONLY shot attempt. Talk about efficiency!
After catching a huge break, the Vandals decided to “park the bus” and hopefully steal away a 1-1 tie out of Pullman. BUT the Cougs were in no mood to lose to them on Sunday night. They put together FIFTEEN shots after their first half 9 shots, and FINALLY got the game winning goal in the 70th minute. How did we score? Off of another corner kick of course! Turns out when you get 15 corners in a game, it usually helps. Julianna Duckett sent home a goal after yet another clear out attempt by the freshman Idaho keeper, who had a very busy and tough night. She actually made some really big saves throughout the game, which easily could’ve been 5 or 6-1!
Afterwards the Cougs locked it down, frequently taking the ball from the exhausted Idaho players and sticking it into their corner, holding the ball as long as they could to wind the clock down. 20 minutes of that and the ref had clearly set a bedtime for himself, so he promptly whistled for the end of the game right on time, maybe even a few seconds early.
Notable stats:
- Head Coach Todd Shulenberger reached 100 career wins with this one! Congrats!
- The Cougars ALL TIME record against EWU, Idaho, and Gonzaga moved to 175-19(shared by ESPN+ broadcaster Trevor Williams).
- 14th consecutive win by the Cougs against the Vandals (Trevor Williams).
- Jenna Studer had her third goal as a Coug, 1st since her season ending injury last year (Trevor Williams).
Overall, it was great home opening week for the Cougs, who saw their record get up to a nice 2-1, as they look to conquer their new conference of the WCC. Really looking forward to this team, which seems to be uber aggressive and likes to follow up shots whenever they can! Really good at set pieces and crossing opportunities which always bodes great success in soccer since those situations are so hard to defend.
Next up is a game AT Stanford on September 1st at 1pm PT which you can watch on ESPN+, FUBO, or the ACC Network. Sure to be a good one, (former) Pac 12 soccer doesn’t play around! Have a great week everyone and as always, GO COUGS!