The LSU soccer team has taken its fair share of lumps this season, but Thursday’s game against Southeastern Conference rival Alabama may have been the biggest stinger of the 2014 campaign.
LSU (5-8-2, 1-4-1 SEC) allowed a game-tying goal in the 89th minute of regulation, and senior midfielder Theresa Diederich scored the Golden Goal to give the Crimson Tide (8-4-2, 3-2-1 SEC) a 3-2 overtime victory over the Tigers on Thursday at LSU Soccer Stadium.
Thursday’s loss marked the first time the Tigers fell to Alabama since LSU coach Brian Lee’s inaugural season in 2005, snapping a streak of eight consecutive unbeaten matches.
“For 88 minutes and 10 seconds, I thought it was a great performance,” Lee said. “We have a really young team, and all of these SEC games are going to come down to the wire. We’ve got to get to the point where we can seal them off.”
LSU appeared to be on the way toward its second SEC win in three games after junior midfielder Natalia Gomez-Junco scored in front of goal in the 58th minute of regulation to give her squad a 2-1 lead.
But Crimson Tide freshman forward Lacey Clarida scored on a wild scramble in front of LSU’s net with less than two minutes remaining in regulation, forcing the Tigers into their third overtime contest of the season.
“On corners, the ball just bobbles around like that, and it’s almost always 50-50 for whoever gets to it first,” said LSU junior goalkeeper Catalina Rubiano, who was making her first career start Thursday. “We should have gotten it out, but [Alabama] got to it first and put it in.”
LSU lost its first overtime game of the season after drawing even in its previous two such matches, but Lee was proud of his team’s resiliency throughout the night.
“They want to win so badly,” Lee said. “We’re certainly freezing up late in those games, but it’s not a lack of want to or desire. They just get nervous. But Alabama’s got a team with five or six seniors on the field, and they’ve been through it. They’ve been on the wrong end of these a lot. There’s just a learning curve for us.”
It appeared the Tigers had learned from their previous mistakes throughout the match, especially after freshman forward Jorian Baucom gave the squad a 1-0 lead off of a penalty kick at the 10:36 mark of the first half.
But Crimson Tide senior midfielder Merel van Dongen knotted the game with her third goal of the season in the 32nd minute of the first half, and both teams went into the break tied 1-1.
Thirteen minutes after halftime, LSU forward Summer Clarke crossed the ball to Gomez-Junco in front of goal, and the Mexican international one-timed it in for her second goal in three games that gave the Tigers a 2-1 lead.
“I just hit it in,” Gomez-Junco said. “It was a great cross by Summer. She did 80 percent of the work. I just happened to be there.”
But corner kicks have doomed the young LSU for much of the season, and Thursday’s match was no different. Diederich fired a corner kick, and Clarida had two cracks at the goal. The first bounced off the crossbar, but Clarida got her own rebound and found the net on her second shot to tie the game at 2-2 with 1:29 in regulation.
Diederich scored for the fifth time this season in the 93rd minute of action to seal the game for the Crimson Tide.
The loss dropped LSU to 11th in the SEC standings with five games remaining. Lee said the Tigers must learn to play for a full 90 minutes if they hope to carry the 2014 campaign into the postseason.
“If we keep playing like that, we just need to seal the game,” Lee said. “The last minutes and last 90 seconds is part of the game, too. You don’t get to just pass that. We just have to keep growing.”