BATON ROUGE – The LSU Soccer team (3-1-0) notched their third straight victory of the year on Sunday evening as they defeated the Southern Jaguars (0-3) by a score 5-0 at the LSU Soccer Stadium.
“We talked about how this was a huge game for Southern, with it being a local derby. They came out and impressed us in the first half,” said LSU Head Coach Sian Hudson. “Overall, we had five different goal scorers for us tonight and we kept a clean sheet, which is really important to us. It’s been great to see the response since our season opener with three back-to-back wins.”
“I’m really looking forward to our road game on Thursday against Wisconsin and seeing if we have another performance like we did last week against Texas.”
The Tigers came to play on both sides of the ball tonight in Baton Rouge. The LSU offense recorded season-highs in goals (5) and shots on goal (13) while the defense held the Jaguars to a clean sheet for the first of the season thanks to a combined effort of goalkeepers Mollee Swift and Bella Zanotelli.
LSU began the game with energy as forward Rammie Noel tallied an early first half goal. Defender Maya Gordon found open midfielder Ava Galligan, who took the ball with open space down the right side. The freshman sent a ground cross ball into the box to Noel, who found the finish as she tapped it into the back of the net to make the score 1-0 LSU.
The goal was Noel’s first of the year and the seventh of her career. Galligan recorded her third assist of the season while Gordon recorded her first.
“Rammie has been outstanding for us this season, so I was really excited to see her get her name on the scoresheet.” said Hudson.
Mollie Baker, Jordan Johnson and Taylor Dobles also contributed to the first half action as they each tallied a shot on goal. Goalkeeper Mollie Swift was called into action multiple times in the first half, recording three saves on four Southern shots. It was a total team effort as LSU held their ground to keep the 1-0 lead going into the second half.
The Tigers came out of the gate flying in the second half as they took a 2-0 lead just minutes after the restart. After a handball foul outside the box, midfielder Raelyn Prince put a beautiful ball into the mix off of a set piece and found forward Britney Bertram, who placed the ball into the bottom right corner in the 46th minute for her first career goal in the Purple & Gold.
Just twenty seconds later, The Tigers regained possession and Johnson sent an excellent ball up to forward Sage Glover, who used her speed to dash past both the Southern defender and goalkeeper. Glover wasted no time as she sent the ball into the goal to make it a 3-0 LSU lead.
LSU notched their fourth goal of the match in just seven minutes of the second half when Johnson fired a long range effort past the right of Southern goalkeeper Sydney Bellamy to make it 4-0 on the night. That was Johnson’s first goal of the 2023 campaign and third in her career.
In the dying embers of the match, midfielder Ida Hermansdottir found Baker on a forward run, who used her speed against a Southern defender and lasered a shot into the top right hand corner to make it 5-0 and cap off the scoring on the night. The goal was Baker’s third of the season and seventh in her career.
The Tigers return to action on Thursday, August 31, as they travel to Madison, Wisconsin to take on the Wisconsin Badgers at 7 p.m. CT at the McClimon Track/Soccer Complex. The game will be available to stream on B1G+ and live stats will be available on LSUSports.net.