Missouri’s out-of-conference play ended in heartbreak on Sunday at Audrey J. Walton Soccer Stadium.
The Tigers fell to the University of Nebraska 1-0 on a goal that came three minutes before the final whistle.
The goal came by way of Nebraska forward Jaycie Johnson, who collected a lobbed through ball on the left side of the field, dribbled it between two Tiger defenders and then slipped it past Mizzou goalkeeper Kelsey Dossey into the back of the net.
“You know I think that’s what hurts on that part of it, she’s a special player, we talked about her and we held her to bay for about 87 minutes,” coach Bryan Blitz said.
Missouri actually appeared to dominate the game, outshooting the Cornhuskers 22-10. These chances were highlighted by a Savannah Trujillo header that had to be parried away by the keeper and a through ball that led to a shot from Jasmine Johnson. The shot was fired straight into the Cornhusker keeper who had rushed off her line.
While not short on chances, Missouri still struggled to put the ball in the net. The game marked the fourth time this season that the Tigers have been shutout.
“It’s really unfortunate that we’ve taken so many shots and not made an impact with our goals, but you’ve got to live with it and we’ll take this week of practice to figure out what’s going on with our offensive mind,” Trujillo said.
Blitz was not impressed by the shots his team took and stressed the importance of working for more high quality shots during the game.
“I think we are settling for long shots,” Blitz said. “I think we still have to be a little bit more aggressive to get an eight-yard shot, a six-yard shot as opposed to a 16 or 18-yard shot.”
The performance that the team turned in was a step backward from the one previously turned in against Auburn University. The players attributed it to the difference of energy levels between both games.
“(Against Auburn) we had energy before the game and in our locker room and we came out here for warmup and throughout the game we didn’t let them out of their half,” defender Candace Johnson said. “Today the energy wasn’t as high as we’d like it to be and that ended up being the difference I think,”
Even after the loss, Mizzou is confident that they can learn and move forward from the defeat.
“We have a thing where at 12 o’clock we stop thinking about it.” Johnson said. “It becomes a lesson instead of a bad memory. We look at film, we look at what we can do better, we practice and we move on for the next game. We have a huge game with South Carolina next week so we have to get ready for that,”
The Tigers’ next game will be Sept. 20 against the University of South Carolina. The game will start at 1 p.m. at Walton Stadium. The game will also be broadcasted live on ESPNU.
