BATON ROUGE – After opening their four-game road swing with a thrilling 4-3 victory over BYU in Provo, Utah, on Thursday night, the LSU Tigers made the cross-country trip to Durham, North Carolina, on Friday and will next face the 25th-ranked Duke Blue Devils on Sunday in a match that is scheduled to kick off at noon CT at Koskinen Stadium.
Fans can watch the Tigers in action as Duke will share its live streaming video of Sunday’s match with Geaux Zone members at www.LSUsports.net/live.
Fans who are unable to watch the match are invited to follow the action through social media as they can receive live updates from the ground by following @LSUSoccer on Twitter at http://twitter.com/lsusoccer and by liking LSU Soccer’s official Facebook page at http://facebook.com/lsusoccer. They are also invited to join in the team’s live in-game chat on Facebook during each match during the 2014 season.
The Tigers (4-2-1) and Blue Devils (3-4) will renew their series on Sunday afternoon after facing one another for the first time at the 2009 Duke Nike Classic where they held one another to a 2-2 draw. It was a match on Sept. 20, 2009, in which LSU stormed back from a 2-0 halftime deficit to take home a 2-2 draw thanks to a 48th-minute strike by former Tiger All-American Malorie Rutledge and a Duke own goal in the 84th minute.
The Tigers also faced then No. 1-ranked North Carolina for the first time in program history during their first trip to Durham for the 2009 Duke Nike Classic, suffering a narrow 1-0 defeat to the Tar Heels.
Duke has built one of the elite programs under the direction of head coach Robbie Church as the Blue Devils recently played for the national championship during the 2011 NCAA Division I Women’s Soccer Tournament where they fell by a score of 1-0 to Stanford in the National Championship Game. They have since advanced to the Elite Eight in the NCAA Tournament in each of the last two seasons in 2012 and 2013.
As they do each season, the Blue Devils have faced a challenging non-conference schedule that is highlighted by a 2-0 shutout of No. 11-ranked West Virginia on Aug. 29 and a 3-0 blanking of No. 18-ranked Arkansas on Sept. 5. They have also battled perennial powers Ohio State, Penn State and Stanford in recent weeks. Duke is currently ranked as high as No. 25 nationally in this week’s TopDrawerSoccer.com Top 25 poll.
But the Blue Devils will look to snap a two-game losing skid on Sunday in the wake of a 4-3 home defeat to No. 7-ranked Penn State last weekend and a 2-1 setback to Hofstra on Friday afternoon in Virginia.
The Tigers enter Sunday’s match on the back of their first signature win of the 2014 season when they opened their four-game road trip with a thrilling 4-3 win over the BYU Cougars at South Field in Provo on Thursday. Four different Tigers found the scoresheet in the win with All-SEC standouts Summer Clarke and Megan Lee finding the net in the first half and rookie striker Jorian Baucom and All-SEC midfielder Emma Fletcher adding their names to the scoresheet in the second half to lead LSU to a victory over the two-time defending West Coast Conference champions.
Clarke and Baucom continue to lead a fearsome front line for the Tigers as they share the team lead with four goals on the campaign. Lee and Fletcher each opened their accounts with their first goals of the year in the team’s most recent triumph as seven different Tigers have now scored the team’s 15 goals through seven non-conference matches during the non-conference season.
It’s a diverse attack that has also seen 10 different Tigers credited with at least one assist during this season as midfielder Natalia Gomez-Junco tops the charts with three assists on the campaign.
After facing the Duke Blue Devils in Durham, North Carolina, on Sunday afternoon, the Tigers will continue their four-game road swing next weekend as they are set to open Southeastern Conference play on Friday by facing the Missouri Tigers in Columbia with kickoff set for 6:30 p.m. CT before traveling to Milwaukee, Wisconsin, on Sept. 21 to battle the Marquette Golden Eagles in a match that is set to kick off at 1 p.m. CT.