LSU senior defender Alex Ramsey picked a good time to notch her first career goal.
Ramsey headed the ball home off of a corner-kick sequence with an assist from sophomore midfielder Heather Magee in the 70th minute, earning the Tigers a 1-0 win against Rice on Sunday and salvaging a weekend split in Texas after Friday’s 4-0 shellacking at Stephen F. Austin.
“It was an odd weekend,” said LSU coach Brian Lee. “We had a flat performance Friday night and came out and fought really hard on Sunday, so it was very similar to last weekend with losing to Minnesota and beating Southern Cal.”
Though it took her 70 minutes Sunday, Ramsey had waited 71 games at LSU to make a mark on the scoresheet. Often confined to the defensive third, the Rock Hill, S.C., native hasn’t had many chances near the net, never earning so much as an assist.
That changed at an opportune moment for the Tigers, as an offensive blitz to open up the second half finally paid off.
After freshman midfielder Emma Fletcher’s corner kick was initially cleared, Magee headed the ball toward the left post, where Ramsey won the scrum and poked the ball past Rice goalkeeper Amy Czyz.
“The first 30 minutes of the second half was about the best we’ve played all year, so it was a relief to see a goal from it,” Lee said. “We were really unlucky to not get a goal sooner, actually. [Czyz] made some fantastic saves off Emma and [sophomore forward Fernanda Pina] and that was after [freshman forward] Summer Clarke had one off the crossbar.”
That action followed a sloppy first half, as both teams dealt with sweltering heat and tired legs, bogging the match down.
Freshman midfielder Megan Lee, who was making her return this weekend from an ankle sprain, twice missed from close range in the ninth minute off of a heads-up interception of Czyz’s attempt to put the ball back in play.
Lee said the heat, which was well over 90 degrees in Houston, plagued both teams and only fueled more rugged play in a typically sloppy Sunday match.
“It was about the norm for an ugly Sunday game, but the teams were more fatigued then ever,” Lee said. “With the heat out there, we were able to rotate a few more players than them and that was probably the difference in the game.”
Once Ramsey put the Tigers in front, they had to to hang on for dear life. Rice forced LSU senior goalkeeper Megan Kinneman to make three of her six saves in the final five minutes, two of them against Owls junior midfielder Quinny Truong.
The shutout was Kinneman’s sixth of the season. That makes 16 clean sheets in her career, good for second in the LSU record books.
The weekend wrapped up LSU’s nonconference slate, as the Tigers open up Southeastern Conference play on Saturday at Vanderbilt.
“This team will be fine if we figure out a way to channel some of the resilience and desperation we have on Sundays with those fresh legs we have in Friday matches,” Lee said. “If we do that, the SEC still has great parity, but we’ll be a threat to win any game.”