FLAGSTAFF, Ariz. (October 29, 2018) – The Northern Arizona women's soccer team will begin its run in the Big Sky Championship against the University of Montana on Wednesday, October 31 at 2 p.m. MST in Ogden, Utah.
The 'Jacks ended the season with a 9-4-4 record and a 5-1-3 record in the Big Sky Conference leaving the team in fourth place on the year.
Entering the final weekend of the regular season Northern Arizona was in second place in the conference and had a chance to clinch first place until going 0-1-1. The Lumberjacks fell 1-0 to Eastern Washington on Friday night and ended their match against Idaho in a 0-0 tie on Sunday.
"This season played out the way I thought it would," NAU head coach
Andre Luciano said. "We had a pretty good core of player's returning on the backline, so we didn't have to look for answers there and our midfield has been pretty constant over the last year. The big question coming into the season was who was going to score for us, and we decided that it was going to be scoring by committee."
This will be the second meeting of the year between the teams, with the first match ending in a 0-0 tie. The matchup was very even throughout as the Lumberjacks were outshot 16-to-15 on Oct. 14. Both
Haleigh Van Allen and
Paige Maling recorded four shots but were unable to slip any past the Grizzlies goalkeeper Claire Howard. NAU's goalkeeper
Taryn Benham picked up four saves during the game.
Entering the Big Sky Tournament, the Lumberjacks are a team that has had a dominant defense all season and has shown spurts of offensive success.
The defense has been a total team effort all season with every player buying into playing for each other. Some notable players that have led this NAU squad to have a stretch of six games without a goal are the goalkeeper Benham, centre-back
Emma Robson, and defensive midfielder
Carly George. This squad tallied a stretch of 684 minutes without a goal given up.
Offensively Northern Arizona ranks sixth in the conference with 19 goals on the season and has shown an ability to score by committee instead of just one or two players. NAU has nine different players with a goal with
Kayla Terhune,
Ana Rivera and
Paige Maling leading the team with three.
Coming into the Big Sky Championships Montana is ranked fifth in the conference with a record of 4-8-6 and a conference record of 3-2-4. The Grizz were able to secure their spot in the tournament after going 2-0-0 in their final weekend of the year. The wins came over Portland State and Sacramento State.
2018 Notables
•
Tatum Heeres leads the team in assists with five, which is currently fourth in the Big Sky Conference
•
Taryn Benham has ten shutouts on the year, which leads the Big Sky Conference and is tied for seventh in the country
• Three different players (
Victoria Cooper,
Madeline Waszak, and
Kylie Kapustka) have scored one goal each, while
Sam Larberg,
Ari Gonzalez and
Haleigh Van Allen have scored two, and
Paige Maling,
Kayla Terhune, and
Ana Rivera have scored three
• Northern Arizona has the fewest goals allowed in the Big Sky Conference with 11, the next closest being 16
•
Carly Gamble has played in all but 65 minutes on the season
• Northern Arizona leads the Big Sky in average home attendance at 764 per game
The Scout
Montana
Day: Wednesday, Oct. 31
Time: 2 p.m. MST
Location: Ogden, Utah
Coverage: Live Stats
https://bit.ly/2Q52UCB Watch Live |
https://bit.ly/2O04E2d
The University of Montana had a slow start to its season as they started the year going 1-6-2, but were able to finish on a stronger note going 3-2-4 in its final nine games clinching fifth place in the conference.
"Montana has made some personnel changes late in the season and have found some success with it," Luciano said.
The Grizz offense has struggled on the season as they have not been able to finish many opportunities on the season, scoring only 13 goals on the season off of 246 shots. The 13 goals rank Montana last in the conference. 11 of the 13 goals come from three players, Alexa Coyle and Kennedy Yost each have four each while Janessa Fowler has three.
On the other side of the pitch, the Grizzlies have allowed 20 goals on the season, ranking them fifth in the conference. The goalkeeper Howard has saved 74 of the possible 94 shots on goal giving her a save percentage of .787.
Looking Ahead
Northern Arizona will need to win its match against Montana to move onto the second round of the tournament where they will take on Weber State on Friday
