The final game of their Nebraska road trip was a tale of two halves for the Rams.
Colorado State (3-5-1) women’s soccer team was shutout in a 2-0 loss to Creighton (7-3) Sunday afternoon in Omaha, Nebraska.
A game that was up for grabs in the first half quickly became dominated by the Bluejays in the second. The first half shot totals favored Creighton 7-4, and it escalated in the second. Creighton flexed its muscle, controlling play constantly and outshooting Colorado State 13-2 in the second frame.
Creighton finally struck first in the 70th minute. Jara Alyssa was fed a cross from Lauren Sullivan and chipped in a ball from eight yards out to put the Bluejays up 1-0.
The Rams fell further behind in the 80th minute when Kaira Houser finished a ball played in by Emily Roll to give the Bluejays a little breathing room. The Rams were only able to muster one shot on goal, six shots total. The Bluejays totaled 20 shots in total, and nine on goal.
“The first half we were fine,” CSU head coach Bill Hempen said. “We had to weather a storm at the very beginning and we go through that and held our own but in the second half we never got through the first ten minutes, the first ten minutes turned into all forty-five. All you need in soccer is one, and we had more than one good chances to score and we just didn’t execute when we needed to. We just didn’t do well enough to succeed.”
Coming off an overtime game, the second game in 36 hours may have taken a toll on the Rams, who looked sluggish in the second half.
“It was the first time the team actually looked exhausted today,” Hempen said. “Their chins were hanging. Second game on turf, and fortunately it wasn’t a million degrees, but you could tell two nights before was starting to take its toll on them.”
The loss to Creighton was the first loss of the year by more than one goal for Colorado State. With the non-conference schedule out of the way, the Rams will be come home ready to start Mountain West play.
“You play teams like Creighton and UNO maybe once a year, or maybe once in a lifetime,” Hempen said. “We’ve got our conference coming up that we’re familiar with and hopefully we’re a little bit more prepared this year than we were the year before.”
The Rams will be home Friday at 4 p.m. to host Fresno State at Lagoon Field in their first Mountain West game.
Collegian soccer reporter Chad Deutschman can be reached by email at sports@collegian.com or on Twitter @ChadDeutschman.
