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Women's soccer falls to Cal State Fullerton

August 26, 2012

With 24 Spartan alumni on hand, the MSU women’s soccer team couldn’t handle Cal State Fullerton, as they fell 1-0.

Head coach Tom Saxton said the game was a tale of two halves and the losses in the Spartan defense had a great effort in the loss.

“I thought we were poor in the first half and I thought they accepted our challenge in the second half and we came out and put a lot of good pressure,” Saxton said. “We got a little thin in the back line and that may have disrupted stuff.”

Cal State’s goal came in the 66th minute off of a corner kick.

“Their goal came off a basic situation where we didn’t pressure the ball and didn’t get out quick enough,” Saxton said. “We talk every day in practice about how important it is on restarts, they win or loose games.”

Redshirt sophomore keeper Courtney Clem said it was a fluky goal where she couldn’t keep her eye on the ball.

“It was just kind of a scrum,” she said. “It was going everywhere and I tried to hop on (the ball).”

Although senior forward Olivia Stander had a few chances to score, she said Fullerton played good defense all around the field.

“They were really organized as a team, not just their back four, but their entire midfield to forward was very organized,” Stander said. “So it was very difficult for us to break them down, but we had a couple scoring chances in the second half and we weren’t able to put them away.”

Looking forward to next Sunday’s matchup with Akron, she said the team has both positives and negatives.

“We’re doing a good job organizing our back line and getting possession of the ball, but moving forward into the 18 yard box we need to be better,” she said.

Saxton emphasized that the players need to transition into being student athlete’s with the beginning of the school year and that he scheduled the next week off on purpose so the team could focus on school work.

Saxon said in addition to the loss of senior defender Kesley Kassab to injury, another key piece of the back line senior defender Desiree Aber was taken out of the game Sunday, which allowed some young players to gain some experience.

“Desiree Aber, who is our senior that moved inside has got a bit of a sore knee,” he said. “She was thinking about it too much, so we pulled her out and that created the need to pull somebody out of position. I hope it’ll calm down this week with some time off.”

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