(Photo: Joey Plishka/WCSN)
TEMPE — Frustration spread eerily as the clock reached 90 minutes. Thursday was a tough night for Arizona State women’s soccer in a home match against Little Rock. Heads were down with most players on their knees as they realized the truth behind this game.
They didn’t play hard enough.
ASU’s non-conference game Thursday night against Arkansas ended in a 0-0 draw, their second on the season. Only one word was mentioned multiple times by head coach Graham Winkworth to describe the night.
“Frustrated,” Winkworth said. “Very frustrated with the world at the moment. Frustrated with my girls. Frustrated with some of the calls being made. Just very frustrated.”
The Sun Devil head coach wasn’t the only one showing irritation on the field, though. Junior forward Enasia Colon was high on the emotions as well as she threw the corner flag and walked toward the bench at the end of the game after the last kick.
“Obviously it sucked,” Colon said. “It was a disappointing moment, we’re a better team than that.”
The main struggle for the Sun Devils tonight was on offense. Seven of their twenty-two shots were on goal, but either deflected by the post, just wide or saved by the keeper. This drew dissatisfaction from the maroon and gold, with their hopes of scoring wasting away after each missed shot.
Senior forward Keri Matthews had a golden opportunity in the 70th minute to score for the Sun Devils from about 45 yards out, but the post intercepted the shot keeping the game scoreless.
“I had chances that I should have finished, but just got to take the pulses. I was in the position to score and that one opportunity where, you know you had an open end and went right over, “ Matthews said.
ASU will travel to take on LSU on Sunday, which will be a difficult matchup on a two-day rest period with the Tigers having more time to prepare. After Thursday’s game, Colon mentioned that something that will be fixed this weekend will be the team chemistry. The maroon and gold showed a weakness in this as well with very limited communication throughout the match.
The Sun Devils are on their fourth game of the season, which Colon said gives them an advantage playing together. However, now their attention must shift to the reigning SEC competition awaiting them on Sunday.
“Just keep our heads up.” Colon said, “the game’s over there’s nothing we can do about it now we just have to focus on Sunday and LSU.”
