Box Score
LOS ANGELES – The Abilene Christian soccer season reached an unfortunate end Sunday afternoon, as the Wildcats fell to Chico State, 1-0, in the quarterfinals of the NCAA Division II Championship.
The Wildcats' final season record stands at 20-2-1, the finest in the program's five-year history. Chico State (13-6-5), meanwhile, remains the championship's lone Cinderella story and will next face Midwest Region #1 seed Grand Valley State (20-0-2) Dec. 1 in the NCAA semifinals. The other semifinal features a battle of #2 seeds Armstrong Atlantic and St. Rose.
Chico State entered the West Region as its fifth seed and its run to the Final Four also includes wins over #4 seed Cal State Stanislaus, top-seeded UC San Diego and #2 seed Cal State Los Angeles.
ACU head coach
Casey Wilson told his team afterward how proud he was of their efforts this season, and that they were the best collection of athletes he's ever coached.
“Going into this season I knew we would go as far, if not farther, because of all the talent we had on this team,” he said, “and I wasn't surprised that we had an undefeated regular season, although it was disappointing that we couldn't win the conference championship. However, by getting here and winning the South Central Region championship, I feel that's a step up from last year's conference title. I'm happy with our overall season, and won't take any of our success for granted.”
However, in the midst of praising his players, Wilson could not mask his disgust with the decision to play today's match, which took place in an unrelenting rainstorm.
Rain began to fall late morning and had completely saturated the playing surface at Cal State Los Angeles within an hour of the scheduled 2 p.m. kick off time. Wilson made it clear the match should have never been started, nor after a 63-minute delay when the match was halted with 11:11 before halftime so that some of the standing water could be pushed toward the gutters.
The rain continued throughout the match and although both sides played on the same field, the conditions clearly took more of a toll on ACU, since they brought the Wildcats' dynamic attacking game to a grinding halt. Passes ACU usually connected with ease were drowning in puddles, and the fleet feet of their midfielders and forwards were so weighed down that dribbling became a near impossible task.
Along the back line, defenders couldn't even tap the ball back to the goalkeeper, while all four corners were filled with ankle-high waters.
The Wildcats controlled the possession for long periods of time, thanks in part to sheer skill, but couldn't generate a shot powerful enough to get up and out of the water and past Chico State goalkeeper Brianna Furner, who finished with six saves.
Chico State didn't have many quality looks either – forcing
Elliott London to make only three stops on nine shots – but they were able to punch one in from the goalmouth at the start of the 14th minute. The score was initiated by a deep throw-in by Blake Lopes that was nicked by London. The ball then landed out of her reach near the far post, where it was first touched by Kasey Wall before Alyx Williams kicked it in.
The goal was Williams' fifth of the year.
ACU tried hard to score an equalizer in the first half, but a shot by
Krysta Grimm was saved and
Lexi Stirling's free kick with 15:30 to go sailed high over the crossbar. The Wildcats had one other good chance to score before the suspension when the ball rolled away from Furner inside the 18, but one of her defenders ran over to boot it back toward midfield.
Coming out the delay,
Lyndsey Womack had a 20-yarder stopped, and then Grimm nearly spun loose inside the box, but had to fight off one too many defenders and lost possession.
After halftime, the Wildcats ran into more bad luck as a booming free kick by
Julie Coppedge was condensed to a slow roller by the time it reached Furner. Minutes later, Carpenter had her first breakaway of the match, but the soggy field conditions dramatically slowed her shot from inside the 18, allowing Furner to run out and retrieve the ball while still in the six.
Coppedge then tried to feed Carpenter a cross from outside the 18, hoping for a header, but the timing was off and Carpenter's attempt was pushed wide. From there, ACU had three more shots – all of them saved by Furner, including two by
Stephanie Heron.
The two teams each recorded nine shots with Chico State's Shelby Dunlap leading all players with three.
