BATON ROUGE — The LSU soccer team saw its two-game Southeastern Conference winning streak snapped Sunday with a 2-0 defeat at the hands of the 14th-ranked Tennessee Lady Volunteers at the LSU Soccer Complex.
The Tigers fall to 6-5-2 overall and 2-3-1 in SEC play this season, while the Lady Vols improve their overall record to 8-4-1 and remain undefeated in the SEC at 6-0.
“Tennessee is an excellent team,” said LSU head coach Brian Lee. “Obviously, they’re the SEC favorite and it wouldn’t surprise me if they won the SEC again. They are a legitimate top-15 team in the country again this year, and they have proven that. We should expect to see that from them in the future as well.”
The Tigers struggled to find an offensive rhythm throughout the match as they only attempted one shot and one shot on goal against an organized Tennessee defense. The Lady Vols held the advantage in shots attempted, 21-1, with nine shots on goal and attempted nine corner kicks to just two for LSU.
“We came out a little flat, and to give up the goal in the second minute of the game was a little deflating to our team,” Lee said. “That was tough for us to come back from. Tennessee is a good team, and they are well-coached. They certainly didn’t make it any easier for us to create scoring chances in the match.”
Tennessee scored its first goal of the match at the 1:18 mark of the first half when sophomore forward Genna Gorman sent a corner kick sailing into the back of the net for her fourth goal of the season. This marks the fastest goal LSU has allowed to open a match in its history, breaking the old mark of 2:00 set by Vanderbilt’s Jessie Wolfe in the SEC Tournament on Nov. 5, 1998.
Freshman forward Kylee Rossi completed the scoring for Tennessee with her team-leading fifth goal of the season in the 82nd minute of the match. Rossi fired a shot into the left side of the net past a diving Jackie Moseley on a rebound off a corner kick by Gorman.
“They scored both of their goals off of corners, and there was really no reason for there to be a corner in those instances,” Lee said. “That’s not to say they wouldn’t have gotten them at other points in the game, but in the two instances they scored we could have cleared the ball forward instead of out of bounds without any pressure on us. We just have to learn from our mistakes and move forward.”
Despite the loss to Tennessee, Lee said he has been pleased with his team’s progress this season. Each of LSU’s five losses are to teams that will likely appear in the NCAA Tournament at the end of the regular season, including Ole Miss, Tennessee, Vanderbilt, Oregon and Oregon State.
“We have played a pretty difficult schedule this season if you look at it,” Lee said. “We’ve played a few ranked teams so far and two teams from the Pac-10 Conference that are likely headed to the NCAA Tournament, and we have really competed well with each those teams. That shows where our program is headed. Our players will only get better with this experience.”
The Tigers will look to rebound on the road next weekend as they travel to the state of Alabama to take on the Alabama Crimson Tide on Friday at 7 p.m. and the Auburn Tigers on Sunday at 2 p.m.