BATON ROUGE — The LSU soccer team opened up its 2001 season with a resounding victory on Friday, as the Tigers defeated the McNeese State Cowgirls, 5-0, at the LSU Soccer Complex. Along the way, Baton Rouge freshman Artie Brown recorded the fifth hat trick in school history.
“I really liked the way we played out there tonight,” said LSU head coach George Fotopoulos. “I think especially in the second half we showed some bang and we totally dominated the game, but we just didn’t have that killer instinct. Artie Brown did a fantastic job for us out there today and Mandy Heintz’ goal really set the tone for us in the first half.”
With the win, the Tigers improved to 1-0 on the season while McNeese State dropped to 0-1. LSU earned a 2-1 advantage in the overall series versus the Cowgirls on Friday and notched its fifth-straight victory over an in-state rival.
“This was a great win for us,” Fotopoulos said. “McNeese battled us hard tonight and I have a lot of respect for their team and the way that they competed, but they?re not Florida. Our team will have tonight to celebrate this victory and then we start working on Florida tomorrow.”
LSU jumped out to an early lead in the contest as Heintz headed an Ashley Mitnick pass through the goal posts from 10 yards out to score the Tigers’ first goal only 3:30 into the game.
LSU then added its second goal of the evening with Brown?s first of three scores at 42:36 into the match. Brown deflected a crossing pass from Elizabeth Marschall to give the Tigers a 2-0 lead at halftime. Heintz, a red-shirt sophomore from San Antonio, Texas, earned her second goal of the contest with 37:27 left in the game before Brown knifed through the Cowgirl defense for the final two goals of the match.
“I honestly didn’t look that good in the preseason,” said Brown. “I’m just thankful that I got the opportunities that I did and I just tried to make the most out of them. I knew that I had to go out there and bust it tonight and do my best.”
Brown, a Baton Rouge native and a high-school standout at University High School, became only the fifth person in LSU history to record a hat trick and the first Tiger freshman to accomplish the feat. LSU?s Kara Dean scored the most recent hat trick last season against Louisiana-Monroe on August 27.
“We looked kind of flat in the first half, and that?s very common in the first game of the season,” said Fotopoulos. “We tried to get a lot of the new players a lot of game time and some of them played a bit tentatively, but it?s good for them to get them experience and it will definitely help us in the long run.”
The LSU soccer team will next be in action on Friday, Sept. 7, as the Tigers host the defending Southeastern Conference champion Florida Gators at 7 p.m. at the LSU Tiger Complex.