SAN DIEGO – Senior Darcy Weiser picked up a loose ball in the box and fired it home in the 76th minute to send the San Diego State Aztecs to a 1-0 Mountain West Conference victory over the UNLV Rebels on Friday night at the SDSU Sports Deck.
It was the second goal this season for Weiser, who missed the first seven games of the year with an injury.
The play started with Jessica Sanders taking a pass in Aztecs territory from Ariana Robles. She drove up the right side and once inside the offensive half of the field played a throughball to Chloe Frisch in the right side of the box. The Rebels keeper came flying off her line to cut down the angle and met Frisch 12 yards out. She stopped Frisch but couldn't collect the ball.
Phoebe Lietch pounced on it, but a sliding tackle by a UNLV defender knocked it away and right onto the foot of the waiting Weiser. The Huntington Beach native fired a shot to the far post for the seventh goal of her Aztecs career and a 1-0 advantage.
From there the Aztecs (3-6-1, 2-1-0 MW) made the lead stand up and took their second consecutive victory, the first time this year the team has won back-to-back games.
UNLV (3-8-0, 0-3-0 MW) outshot the Aztecs 13-to-6 but were able to put just two shots on frame compared to San Diego State's four.
The glaring stat was the Rebels had 12 corner kicks to SDSU's one. It appeared in a six minutes stretch in the middle of the first period that UNLV had something building. They attempted six corner kicks which led the three shots in the box during that stretch, but the Aztec defense was up to the challenge. They, along with keeper Brooke Lisowski, stopped everything that the Rebels threw at them.
It looked like San Diego State would strike in the first half when, in the 36th minute, Veronica Avalos nearly scored from point blank range.
Off a free kick, Kiera Utush played it to Laura Fuentes who drove to the end line on the left side of the box and then centered it to the top left corner of the six. Avalos hammered a one-timer to her right with the outside of her right boot. The ball flew past the keeper, and but for a defender who was luckily for UNLV in the right place at the right time, the ball would have gone in. Instead, it slammed off her leg, which saved the day and sent the teams to the intermission in a 0-0 tie.
The sides played the second half evenly until Weiser put the Aztecs ahead for good at the 75:42 mark. The goal, her second of the season, ties her with Chloe Frisch and Kiera Utush for the team lead.
For the game Weiser and Frisch took a team-high two shots, with Avalos and Laura Fuentes producing a shot a piece.
Lisowski (3-6-1) saw the Rebels take a lot of shots, but the two that reached her line were turned away and she recorded her second clean sheet in as many games and her third of the season.
UNLV's Jadyn Nogues produced a game-high five shots and keeper Emberly Sevilla (3-7-0) made three saves in taking the loss.
THE QUOTE
"I though our energy was good in the warm-up," head women's soccer coach Mike Friesen said. "But we didn't show up to compete at the level we need to compete against a team that was desperate to get a win. I thought that UNLV did a really good job of winning a lot of 50-50 balls and putting us under pressure where we couldn't do what we normally do. That's a credit to them and at the same time, we were doing some things that led to UNLV getting some opportunities, specifically the corners.
"We made a lot of mistakes in how we were defending. We put ourselves in a really dangerous spot. The positive was we defended the corners really well. We didn't give away too many close chances and got out of the half at 0-0, but we didn't come to compete like we need to if we want to compete in this conference.
"For the last year, with this young group, we've had to learn how to win. At times, it has been a rough deal and we've had many games where we've walked off the field and wondered how we didn't win the game. We'd have more chances. We'd created all these opportunities, and yet we gave away one chance and would lose 1-0. So, for a game like tonight, where they had more opportunities to create dangerous chances, we did a really good job of keeping something alive and then Darcy showed up at the right moment to finish it off. That type of thing leads to a championship mentality. This is a huge step for us. We didn't play our best, we were not creating the chances we normally create or the possession we normally create, but at the end of the day we got the result and that is huge for us."
NEXT UP
The Aztecs wrap up its three-game homestand on Sunday. SDSU hosts Nevada on the SDSU Sports Deck with kickoff scheduled for 12:00 p.m.
Weiser Sends Women's Soccer To 1-0 Victory
