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Lady Oaks Unlucky Losers
Oakland City 0-2 Asbury College
The Lady Oaks of Oakland City University came up against Regional foes Asbury College looking to avenge a 4-0 defeat from last season, and were left wondering exactly how they hadn't.
The Lady Oaks started strongly and took the game to Asbury, creating a number of chance in the opening exchanges only to see them all drift agonisingly past the left post. With 20 minutes of the game gone, they had to reorganise after forward Chrissy Longest (New Albany, In) was struck in the face in an aeriel challenge and left the field nursing a possible fractured jaw (thankfully, not the case, but she was unable to reenter).
With Emily Gries (Evansville, In) pushed forward Oakland City continued to create chances, Gries herself hitting the crossbar with Amber Kessler (Washington, In) just unable to turn in the rebound. However, the reorganisation took some time and Asbury played a long ball through a mix-up on the right and their forward made no mistake placing it into the far corner.
his setback saw the Lady Oaks lose the initiative for the only time in the match but they came on strong again to fashion a few more unconverted openings before the half.
The second half was a similar story, Gries hit the post, Susana Ventura-Gonzalez (Baja California, Mexico) hit the post and Danielle Hinton (Jeffersonville, In) went close on a number of occasions but they just could not find the back of the net
Finally with time against them Britnye Smith (Washington, In) was thrown forward in a last ditch attempt to get the goal with the Lady Oaks playing a player down in defense. This proved fatal as Asbury exploited Oakland City's commitment to offense with a breakaway goal with just three minutes remaining.
"We learned a lot of lessons from this game," Coach Botterill said after the game, "We need to be more clinical going forward and we can't afford to lose concentration at the back. I think the biggest lesson we learned though is that sometimes in soccer you can play better, have more chances and still lose. This defeat will spur us on for the rest of the season."