BATON ROUGE ? The LSU soccer team continued its spring season this past weekend with a trip to College Station, Texas, where it dropped a hard fought 1-0 decision to national power Texas A&M on Sunday at the Aggie Soccer Stadium.
The Tigers are now 0-1-2 in their difficult spring exhibition schedule after opening with a pair of 0-0 draws against the North Carolina Tar Heels and the Duke Blue Devils on Feb. 16.
“This is what the spring season is all about, training against the best teams in the country in order to better prepare ourselves for a difficult season in the fall,” said LSU head coach Brian Lee. “Texas A&M is a tremendous team and the level of success that they’ve achieved as a program is something we hope to reach in the very near future.
“We’ve stood toe-to-toe against some of the best teams in the country through three games in the spring and have shown that we have the potential to compete with anyone at this level.”
The Tigers were unable to take control of the match early despite two golden opportunities in front of goal. In the opening minutes of the match, Michelle Makasini controlled a centering pass from Rachel Yepez, dribbled past a defender and fired a wide-open shot into the waiting arms of Texas A&M goalkeeper Kelly Dyer from eight yards out.
Freshman Taryne Boudreau took a corner kick minutes later when she centered a pass to a wide-open Chelsea Potts inside the six-yard box, but Potts was unable to head home the first goal of the match as the ball deflected over the net and past the end line for a goal kick.
Texas A&M’s Sarah Pierson scored the only goal of the match in the 34th minute by bending a free kick over the LSU wall and past freshman goalkeeper Mo Isom into the upper 90 inside the left post. It is the only goal Isom has allowed in exhibition play since joining the club in January.
Isom recorded a total of six saves on the afternoon as the Tigers were outshot by a 10-5 margin in the match. The Tigers forced Dyer to make three saves in 90 minutes of action.
“We certainly had our chances, but you have to credit Texas A&M for the way they played,” Lee said. “Their goalkeeper came up with some big saves early and we weren’t able to generate any momentum as the match wore on. Coach (G.) Guerrieri does a great job with their team, and they really showed their class. We have great respect for their team and their program.”
The Tigers will return to the pitch in eight days as they travel to Natchitoches on March 12 to take on in-state rival Northwestern State. They wrap up the spring exhibition season with matches against Southeastern Louisiana on April 2 and nationally-ranked Texas on April 12.