BATON ROUGE – The LSU Soccer team is ready to kick off Southeastern Conference play this weekend as the Tigers continue their four-game road swing with a trip to Columbia, Missouri, on Friday night to battle the Missouri Tigers in a match that is scheduled to kick off at 6:30 p.m. CT at Audrey J. Walton Stadium on the SEC Network+.
LSU (4-3-1) will make its debut on the SEC Network+ when it takes on Missouri (5-1-2) as the match will feature on ESPN3.com and the Watch ESPN app on all computers, smartphones and tablets.
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 this season.
Friday’s match will be the third meeting between the two sides on the soccer pitch as LSU has won each of their last two contests since Missouri joined the SEC in the 2012 season. LSU went on the road and scored a 3-1 victory over No. 16-ranked Missouri in their inaugural meeting on Oct. 21, 2012, before emerging as 1-0 victors at the LSU Soccer Stadium in Baton Rouge on Oct. 11 a year ago.
LSU has enjoyed great success in SEC openers under the direction of head coach Brian Lee while posting a 5-2-2 mark in their first league matches in nine previous seasons since the 2005 season. The Tigers posted a 4-6 mark in SEC openers prior to Lee’s arrival for a 9-8-2 mark since their inaugural season back in 1995.
If LSU is to win its SEC opener for the third time in four seasons, it must do so against a red-hot Missouri side that enters Friday’s match riding a three-game winning streak and six-game unbeaten streak while posting a 5-0-1 mark since a 2-1 extra time victory over the TCU Horned Frogs in a match played in Fort Worth, Texas, back on Aug. 29.
Missouri opened its current three-game winning streak with a 1-0 defeat of UT-Martin on Sept. 7, followed by a 4-3 win over Montana on Sept. 12 and a 3-1 defeat of Cal State Northridge on Sunday. Taylor Grant is the reigning SEC Offensive Player of the Week after scoring the game-winning goals for Missouri over both Montana and Cal State Northridge last weekend.
While Grant is Missouri’s leading goal scorer with a career-high six goals already scored this season, senior midfielder Kaysie Clark tops the SEC charts and ranks third nationally with eight assists for the 2014 season.
LSU and Missouri are two sides that mirror one another in many respects as each team has scored 15 goals on the offensive end while conceding nine goals to their opponents heading into their SEC opener. Leading an offensive attack for the visiting Tigers are star strikers Summer Clarke and Jorian Baucom as each has scored a team-leading four goals heading into LSU’s SEC opener on Friday night.
The Tigers kicked off their four-game road swing with a cross-country trek last weekend that spanned 6,214 miles on six flights plus bus travel across the four time zones in the continental United States to face a pair of the NCAA’s premier programs in recent seasons at BYU in Provo, Utah, on Sept. 11 and No. 25-ranked Duke in Durham, North Carolina on Sunday.
The Tigers scored a thrilling 4-3 victory over the Cougars at South Field in Provo before suffering a 1-0 setback against the Blue Devils at Koskinen Stadium in Durham for a split weekend to open the road trip.
Clarke opened the scoring against the Cougars in the 23rd minute while Baucom converted a penalty kick in the 64th minute in LSU’s victory at BYU last Thursday night. Also opening their accounts for the season with the first goals of the campaign were All-SEC left back Megan Lee in the 39th minute and All-SEC midfielder Emma Fletcher with the game-winning goal in the 79th minute in LSU’s first signature win of 2014.
After facing the Missouri Tigers in their Southeastern Conference opener in Columbia on Friday night, LSU will wrap up its four-game cross-country road trip on Sunday afternoon with a trip to Milwaukee, Wisconsin, to take on the defending Big East Conference champion Marquette Golden Eagles with kickoff set for 1 p.m. CT at Valley Fields.