A back-and-forth game tilted the visitor’s way Friday night at the Walton Complex. The No. 8 Florida Gators women’s soccer team utilized the lethal combination of Jo Dragotta to Annie Speese on two occasions, notching a 2-0 win and snapping the No. 24 Missouri Tigers’ winning streak at seven.
Speese opened up the scoring in the 43rd minute with a left-footed blast from 20 yards out that breezed past the outstretched arms of MU (7-2) redshirt freshman goalkeeper McKenzie Sauerwein and into the top shelf of the net. Dragotta’s smooth release allowed Speese to put the shot on goal unchallenged as Florida (6-2) deflated Missouri’s strong first half with the late tally.
“You have to stay focused,” coach Bryan Blitz said. “We had two lapses of focus and when you play a great team like this, they’re going to punish you.”
The first half saw powerful momentum swings go both ways as each team shared possession and opened up the back line.
Perhaps the Tigers’ best opportunity of the game came in the eighth minute. Sophomore forward Danielle Nottingham broke through the Florida defense on a pass from fellow sophomore forward Alyssa Diggs and had a chance to give MU an early lead with a wide open net in front of her. A last ditch effort from a Gators’ defender prevented a potential game-changing goal in the opening minutes, however, and the Tigers failed to get on the board.
“I had a wide-open goal and then the defender was right there,” Nottingham said. “That defender tracked back and deflected it. You look back at it at halftime and think that we should be up right now. It’s so frustrating.”
The second half started off with a bang as a promising free kick from freshman midfielder Kaysie Clark in the 54th minute sailed through a maze of bodies and somehow emerged untouched.
Missouri generated a pair of great opportunities two minutes later. Florida goalkeeper Taylor Burke dropped an easy shot and helped set up a booming cross straight at Tigers’ freshman forward Abi Raymer’s head. Burke and Raymer crashed into each other in mid-air on a play that resembled something more commonly found on Faurot Field.
That would be the end of MU’s assault on the Florida goal as Sauerwein, named Big 12 Defensive Player of the Week for her two shutouts in Arizona last weekend, did her best to keep her team in the game. She stuffed a point-blank chance from the Gators’ Lindsay Thompson in the 68th minute.
The final nail in the coffin came after a Missouri lapse of focus on a free kick in the 86th minute, setting up an easy goal for Speese and effectively ending the match.
While MU paced Florida by a count of 6-3 on corner kicks, the Gators took a 6-2 edge in the pivotal shots on goal and dominated the final 30 minutes of the fixture.
Tigers’ junior defender Allison Hu thinks her team will bounce back and admitted the “Playing for Pink” game, which featured an all-pink theme in an ode to fighting breast cancer, was an emotional affair after her mom tackled the disease six years ago.
“We had some breakdowns but it wont happen again,” Hu said. “This game was very important to me because my mom had breast cancer and this was for cancer support and research, such a good cause. I told my teammates to go out there and give it our all for them.”
Missouri will look to start a new winning streak with an in-state matchup against UM-Kansas City at 1 p.m. Sunday at the Walton Complex.
