On paper, the 2013 LSU soccer season looked strikingly similar to the 2012 incarnation.
With a record hovering around .500, international freshmen mixing with upperclassmen mainstays and a devastating first-round loss in the Southeastern Conference Tournament, the similarities run deep.
But LSU coach Brian Lee will be the first to say that the 2013 Tigers were just a beat off from being an NCAA Tournament team and an SEC contender — something he wouldn’t say about the 2012 squad.
“The results went almost the same [as 2012], but there was a totally different feel to it when game night came,” Lee said. “When fully healthy and clicking, we had a team that was capable of being a top-notch SEC team and beating what was an elite non-conference opponent like [then-No. 12] Southern Cal.”
Absences by key players were chief among the issues that kept LSU out of the NCAAs for the second straight year.
Starting sophomore center back Tori Sample suffered a season-ending knee injury in September at Rice, keeping her off the field for the entire conference slate.
Sample was part of a back line that posted five shutouts in non-conference play. LSU would only post one more.
Meanwhile, as Sample shuffled out of the lineup, heralded freshman Megan Lee returned from an ankle injury that kept her out of the starting lineup for the same eight matches Sample played.
Megan Lee then missed two of LSU’s final three regular-season matches to play with the New Zealand national team.
“Certainly, it’s a great honor, but you feel like you could make a difference for your team in those games,” Megan Lee said last month.
The Tigers went 3-5-1 without the freshman defender and 6-4-2 with her.
“We couldn’t withstand the loss of a player or two,” Brian Lee said. “When it happened, it left holes in the roster and that physically, it caught up with us.”
Adding to that strain was a brutal closing stretch that included four ranked foes in the final five matches — all losses.
LSU lost three of the five by one goal and also held a second-half lead at No. 25 Kentucky before falling 3-1 on Oct. 27. Megan Lee missed that match and a 2-1 defeat at home to Georgia two days earlier.
“If those are scheduled differently, I can’t imagine we don’t win one or both,” Brian Lee said. “The league schedule was certainly backloaded. We beat everybody we finished above early and lost to everyone we finished below late. They were all tight.”
That weekend was one example of the new “split” weekends — when teams begin a weekend at home and end it on the road. LSU ran that gauntlet in two consecutive weeks, just as the scheduled toughened.
“SEC cities aren’t easy to get to, and the Friday games have players leaving the field at 10 p.m., and then they have to be back at 6 a.m. to leave,” Brian Lee said. “That’s a tough, tough task. Sundays in the SEC, road wins are rare enough as it is without that hurdle.”
One LSU win or tie in those last five matches would have given the Tigers a bye in the SEC Tournament.
Instead, LSU found itself on the wrong end of another hard-luck, first-round loss.
A controversial penalty on LSU junior defender Jodi Calloway in overtime gave Auburn a penalty-kick walk-off win one year after Ole Miss scored with 43 seconds left in the first round to end LSU’s season.
After four division titles in five years between 2007-11, the Tigers have briefly fallen from the league’s elite.
According to Brian Lee, there is a silver lining to that cloudy reality.
Three LSU freshmen — Megan Lee, Summer Clarke and Emma Fletcher — made the All-SEC Second Team.
“That’s the first time that’s happened in SEC soccer history,” Brian Lee said. “They all had outstanding seasons, and the honors speak volumes to the impact they can have over their four years here.”
Clarke led the team with 10 goals scored, and Fletcher set an LSU freshman record with 12 assists.
That unprecedented freshmen production, coupled with another likely top-10 recruiting class, could spur a revival sooner rather than later.
“There’s some cyclical nature to college teams outside of the few dominant teams in any sport,” Brian Lee said. “We’ve had what you could call a down cycle. and we feel a little more fortune and some great players here and on the way could change our luck real fast.”