The University of Mississippi Athletics
Ole Miss Drops Tight Home Opener To Memphis 2-1
9/5/2008 | Soccer
OXFORD, Miss. On a soggy field and a humid night, the Ole Miss soccer team fought hard to the end, but could not overcome a two-goal deficit in a 2-1 loss to Memphis Friday night in the Rebels' home opener at the Ole Miss Soccer Stadium.
Sophomore forward Taylor Cunningham scored the first goal of her Rebel career on a header off a Mallory Coleman corner kick in the 83rd minute as part of a flurry of Rebel offensive activity, but Memphis' two goals by Ashley Berra and Vendula Strnadova were enough for a Tiger victory.
"It's a disappointing result, but I'm not disappointed at all in the way we played," said Rebel head coach Steve Holeman. "We had unbelievable effort. We spent a majority of the game in their half. We created a lot of opportunities, and we fought hard. Memphis is a good team and they happened to score against the run of the play on both of their goals."
Ole Miss (0-2-2) out-shot the Tigers (2-0-1) by a 10-8 margin and maintained control of the possession for much of the contest, especially during a large portion of the second half.
With the Rebels trailing 1-0 just over 60 minutes into the match, they turned up the heat on the Memphis defense, led in large part by Coleman. In the 64th minute, the junior midfielder took a rocket of a shot from about 25 yards that was punched out of play by a diving Elise Kuhar-Pitters in the Tiger goal to maintain the Memphis lead.
"This was Mal's best game of the year," Holeman said. "She brought a new mentality to the game and it made a big difference. Their keeper came up with a huge save, one of the best saves I've seen in the last five years. When it left Mal's foot I was thinking equalizer goal, but she picked it out."
After Strnadova put the Tigers ahead 2-0 in the 75th minute, Ole Miss continued its fierce attack and was rewarded when Cunningham's header off of a brilliant corner kick by Coleman got past Kuhar-Pitters to make it 2-1.
The Rebel attack seemed to wear down the Memphis defense as they progressed into the second half, and the Tigers piled up 20 fouls to Ole Miss' seven in the physical contest.
"In the first half, we were possessing well and they became very compact in their defense and it was difficult to break their defense," Holeman said. "In the second half, we played with energy and matched the first half. We continued to keep the ball. When you're possessing and the other team is defending, it kind of wears them down and they started to break down a little bit which created more chances for us."
An absence of note was that of two-time All-SEC midfielder Jennifer Hance, who sat out the match with a sprained ankle she suffered after scoring a goal against TCU last Sunday. She is not expected to miss a substantial amount of time. The TCU game was furthermore unkind to Ole Miss, though, as redshirt-freshman forward Lily Crabtree tore her ACL in the final minutes of the match and will miss the remainder of the year.
Ole Miss maintains a 7-4-1 lead all-time in the series with Memphis, but lost its second straight to the defending Conference USA champs.
The Rebels return to action at home Sunday with a 2 p.m. contest against Southern Miss. It will be "Take a Kid to the Game" Day at the Ole Miss Soccer Stadium. Children receive free admission with the purchase of an adult ticket, and the Rebel players will sign autographs on the field following the game.
