BATON ROUGE — The LSU soccer team is looking to win its fifth-consecutive contest of the season on Friday, as the Tigers face the McNeese State Cowgirls at 4 p.m. at the McNeese Intramural Fields in Lake Charles.
“This was a game that was originally scheduled to be played on Wednesday,” said LSU head coach George Fotopoulos. “Their (McNeese State’s) field was pretty flooded with all of the rain that they got this week, so we agreed to push it back to Friday and it actually gave us a couple of extra days of rest. We’d played four games in 12 days and we were pretty wiped out.”
LSU heads into Friday’s in-state matchup with a four-game winning streak and an overall record of 5-1 on the season. After narrowly falling to 23rd-ranked Miami, 1-0, on Sept. 6, the Tigers have reeled off wins against No. 19 Florida State, 2-1, Loyola (N.O.), 7-0, Louisiana-Monroe, 4-0, and Nicholls State, 9-0.
The Tigers’ 9-0 thrashing of Nicholls State on Sunday proved to be LSU’s largest shutout victory since they defeated McNeese State by the same score in 1996.
McNeese State enters Friday’s home-opening contest with an 0-5 overall record on the season. The Cowgirls have been outscored 17-3 and have recorded losses against Arkansas State, 3-1, Arkansas-Little Rock, 4-1, Birmingham Southern, 3-1, Samford, 1-0, and Baylor, 6-0.
“McNeese (State) has had a tough schedule so far,” Fotopoulos said. “They’ve had to play a lot of consecutive road games and it’s hard to play anybody on the road. We have to make sure that we are ready to play, because I know that it will be a hostile environment and this is a huge match for them. Whenever they play LSU it’s a big ordeal, just because of the rivalry.”
LSU owns a 2-0 record on the road this season after defeating Stephen F. Austin, 2-0, in Nacogdoches, Texas, and knocking off Florida State in Tallahassee, Fla. With a victory on Friday, the 2002 version of the Tigers will become the first team since 2000 to start a season 3-0 on the road.
The Tigers own a 2-1 lead in the all-time series against McNeese State.
LSU’s victories have come in 1996, 9-0, and 2001, 5-0, while the Cowgirls’ earned a win in the 1999 matchup, 2-1. McNeese State’s upset victory in 1999 spawned an LSU 13-game winless streak.
The LSU soccer team will attempt to remain undefeated against in-state opponents in its 14th-straight game on Friday, as the Tigers face McNeese State in Lake Charles at 4 p.m.