Road trip leaves soccer still scrounging for victory

By Yan Digilov     9/3/09 7:00pm

Two games, zero goals. Not exactly how the soccer team was expecting to complete its first road trip. It was a scoreless weekend for Rice's offense over the weekend as the team dropped a pair of 1-0 games, first to Marquette University and then to the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. But Head Coach Chris Huston believes there was plenty of good that came out of the tough roadtrip.

"We knew going in it was going to be a tough weekend on the road," she said. "Obviously we came up short both games, but I think that we learned a lot. It gave the girls a good idea of what the next level is, a real good idea of what we're about to face here coming up."

What the Owls are about to face is one of the toughest schedules in the program's history. Marquette and Milwaukee were ranked fourth and fifth in their region, respectively, and in their next home game this Sunday at 6 p.m., they will take on Texas Christian University, ranked fourth in its region.

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The Owls still have seven games remaining against regionally-ranked opponents, so Huston sees no problem with growing accustomed to a higher level of play early on in the season.

"It seems daunting, but you can look at it and get real excited because it's that many opportunities we have to knock off teams that are ranked way ahead of us," she said.

The difficult schedule reflects Huston's confidence that the Owls are able to compete with some of the best teams in the nation. The lessons from last weekend will do much to get the team to where they need to be.

Most alarming was the shot differential in both games. On Friday,

as the home teams forced Rice into predominantly defensive positions in both matches.

"We've got to give credit to Marquette and Milwaukee because they both took us out of our game," Huston said. "When you're defending the whole time it's hard to create opportunities, and that's what we were doing. We'd win the ball, and then we'd give it right back."

The thing that the Owls clearly lacked was the ability to make quick decisions. Speed of play generally marks the divide between conference competitors and regional powerhouses.

But if the Owls were forced to defend for 180 minutes over the weekend, two goals is really quite good, especially considering the backline is still trying to find the proper chemistry to perform at its best.

"We just wanted to focus on keeping our defense together," said senior defensive leader Alexa Coralli. "Mainly shape and organization is the biggest key. Mistakes happen. Breakdowns happen, and obviously that occurred. But [we are happy] as long as we learn from it and practice during the week on not making those breakdowns happen."

The defensive unit also fell short of blaming the offense for the lack of production.

"Everything's a team effort," Coralli said. "With defensive breakdowns it starts with the forwards and attacking starts with the defense up to the forwards. It starts with everyone."

The whole team is also going to have to work on maintaining the endurance to show up energetic for future Sunday games. Huston said that she felt the squad's legs gave out early in the Sunday game.

But playing an entirely defensive game will do that to any team, and only a quicker-paced squad will be able to accomplish the lofty goals that the Owls have set out for themselves from the start of the season.

Rice faces Stephen F. Austin tonight in Nacogdoches, Texas, at 7 p.m. The game feels like a must-win for the Owls in order for the squad to get re-energized for the tough competition they will soon be facing through conference play. The team also has also historically been known to play much better on Sunday after good results on Friday. And a strong showing against TCU could be just what they need to get within range of a regional ranking early in the year.

The big question for the weekend is finally no longer whether or not the defensive unit feels comfortable playing with one another. Volunteer coach Craig Waibel, who plays defense for the professional Houston Dynamo, said that he would be very happy if the team defense continued to limit the opposition to a single point.

Instead, the deciding factor will be whether or not the veteran players in the front, with the help of newcomers like freshmen midfielder Julia Barrow and forward Alex Burton, can step up to lead the team with some offensive consistency. Though consistency has been one of the toughest hurdles for the Owls to conquer in recent years, the players that have been there before seem confident.

"Everyone's staying pretty positive," Coralli said. "We know it's going to be a tough week with a lot of hard work. We're just focusing on SFA, one game at a time, and focusing on what we can do to be the best prepared we can. . As long as we are making ourselves better, we will get some wins.

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