The LSU soccer team earned a bid to the NCAA Division I Women’s Soccer Tournament for the first time in four years and the fifth time in program history on Monday.
The Tigers (13-5-4, 5-4-2 Southeastern Conference) are coming off a heroic performance at the SEC Tournament in Orange Beach, Alabama, that catapulted them into a Round of 64 matchup against South Alabama University at 7 p.m. on Saturday in Mobile, Alabama.
South Alabama (17-2-2, 9-0 Sun Belt Conference) won the Sun Belt Conference Championship on Sunday after outscoring opponents 13-3 in its three conference tournament matches. The Jaguars are 16th in the NCAA ratings percentage index, the highest-ranked non-Power Five school in the nation.
LSU is 40th in the NCAA RPI rankings after playing a challenging nonconference schedule. The Tigers won five of their last seven games to end the season and made it to the semifinal match in the SEC Tournament.
“This season has gone great for our girls so far, they have worked so hard,” said LSU coach Brian Lee in a news release. “It’s been a nine-month process, and everyone has played a huge role in helping us get to this point. We’ve talked all year about our reason for wanting to get here is because we think we have a team that can accomplish some great things in the tournament.”
At the beginning of the season, Lee and his team made a list of things they wanted to accomplish by the end of the year. One of those goals was going undefeated at home, a feat the Tigers pulled off, going 8-0-4on their home turf.
Senior midfielder Natalia Gomez-Junco said another of the team’s goals was to qualify for the tournament.
“We’ve worked so hard for this,” Gomez-Junco said. “This was our goal from the beginning of the season so we deserve it. We set these goals at the beginning of the season and we’ve accomplished most of them.”
Gomez-Junco is one of nine seniors who could potentially be playing her last collegiate game when she steps on the pitch Saturday.
Fifth-year senior defender Alex Arlitt brings prior NCAA tournament experience as she’s the only Tiger to play in the tournament the last time the Tigers earned a berth in 2011.This year’s team deserved a bid to the tournament because of all of its hard work, Arlitt said.
“When you come in as a freshman, you never think that it might be your only chance to really get to this point,” Arlitt said. “This is a program that deserves these moments. We’ve worked so hard as a team to get back here, and now we need to focus on our preparation to take this season as far as it can go from here.”
After the team found out it earned an at-large bid to the tournament, Lee told the team to focus on taking each game one step at a time.
“That’s how you accomplish big things,” Gomez-Junco said. “You can’t see the whole picture just yet. We’re just focusing on South Alabama right now. Focusing on every single play and every second.”