At Barco Duratz

Meadville 0 Villa Maria 3

The Meadville Ladydogs suffered their first loss of the season at the hands of the Villa Victors 3 0 on Tuesday Night. It was a tough pill to swallow. Meadville had wonderful defensive shape/positioning throughout most of the match. Furthermore, both keepers collected numerous shots.However, defensive break down on a corner kick led to the Victors pressuring Meadville to score for the Victors. There were so many errors committed during the corner kick that led to them bouncing a ball off of us that it makes it hard to appreciate one of the most beautiful defensive plays of the season.

Just three minutes earlier, Nicalette Fuller laid her body out on the line to make a one handed save. Then, Morgan Schreck made a beautiful move to protect the goal line and not only stop the ball from entering the goal, but cleared it out as well. Yet the blundering corner kick just eclipses this play. We had outstanding defensive player from our central defenders, Brown and Mercier, defending, Our midfield was clogging up the center. Overall,  defensively as a team we did a nice job, Yet made a couple more mistakes in the second half. Villa dominated possession, and we never got a rhythm to do our best offensively.

We did a much better job last year during the D10 playoffs of possessing the ball, and we simply did not match that effort. We became so focused on defending as a unit, we forgot some of the basics of counterattacking, like moving to open space and relieving pressure when winning the ball. We were definitely not playing the ball the way we were facing and we were too rushed to go forward with it. According to Jim Hunter of the Tribune, Villa outshot us 40 to 4, and we are much more capable of putting pressure on them. So what do we take from this match?

First,there is nothing to celebrate from this match--we lost.  We seem to improve every time we play them, but the goal is to beat them, and more work is needed. Now, we can't simply focus on Villa, or McDowell, because we have a game this Thursday against Mercer at 4 pm at home. We need to take care of business at practice on Wednesday to prepare for the Mustangs. Yet we are not shy in saying we want one of the top teams in our trophy case.

Score at half 1 -0

Meadville Own Goal

Final Score 3-0