Women's soccer sets mark for consecutive home wins

"Expect the unexpected" is the motto head coach Julie Shackford introduced to the women's soccer team this season. Expect rainy conditions, expect injuries, expect a tougher team than last season. But for Princeton fans, the Tigers have been getting pretty darn predictable.

Women's soccer clinched a spot in the record book with 11 consecutive home wins after downing Brown, 2-0, on Saturday.

Although the scores don't reflect it, the Tigers (9-1 overall, 3-0 Ivy League) decidedly outplayed the Bears (4-6, 1-2). From the outset of the first half, Princeton flooded Brown goalie Hillary Wilson with shots, who finished the game with six saves. If anything could be found at fault with the Tigers' play, it was their inability to put the shots away.

"We're happy we're winning," freshman midfielder Diana Matheson said. "But we could play better. We're just not clicking all the way."

Unlike Brown, Princeton was able to trap the ball down quickly and gain control of balls in the air, creating a huge number of goalscoring opportunities. The Tigers outshot the Bears, 22-2.

Princeton took great advantage of its control of the ball to make difficult passes and trap them down quickly into open space. Meanwhile, even if the Bears got first head or foot on an open ball, the time it took them to trap it down was all the time needed for a Tiger player to place pressure, position herself or take it away.

Senior defender Elizabeth Pillion scored the first tally of the day at 18 minutes, 28 seconds into the first half. The Tigers had already taken three shots on goal and two corner kicks by this time, but it was their third corner that produced results.

Junior midfielder Maura Gallagher kicked the ball high in front of the goal where Pillion was able to step in and head it over the outstretched arms of Brown goalie Wilson. The goal was Pillion's first of the season and third in her career.

The Bears had yet to even shoot the ball by this time, but gradually became more offensively aggresive. Indeed, Brown employed increasingly physical play. Yet, because the Tigers often had the advantage, these fouls for the most part went uncalled.

During the last third of the half, though, there were more fouls and fewer shots as both sides urgently tried gain an advantage in order to put one away before the half. Neither team managed to do so, however, and the score at halftime was 1-0 in favor of the Tigers.

"We weren't creating a lot of chances," Matheson said. "We wanted to keep the ball more, create more chances and put them away quickly."

Shackford switched from an arrangement of 4-4-2 (four in the back, four in the midfield and two at forward) in the first half to a 3-5-2 in the second half in order to create more opportunities and press the Brown's backfield with more numbers.

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"We knew Brown was going to sit back and defend a lot," Matheson said. "We knew we had to go at them. We needed more people up top. We needed to attack more, pressure more."

The move paid off almost immediately. Two minutes in, a shot by sophomore forward Meghan Farrell went just wide. Later, senior forward Esmeralda Negron was knocked over by Bear defender Jill Mansfield while carrying the ball upfield. Both players went down and the foul was on called Mansfield.

A direct kick from right outside the box by Matheson went right past the keepers' gloves and into the upper lefthand corner of the goal, padding the Tigers' lead to 2-0.

Less than four minutes later, the ball was loose in front of the Bears' goal. After no fewer than three Tigers got a shot off, the ball found the foot of senior defender Rochelle Willis, who promptly emptied it into the left side of the net. An offsides call, however, cut short the cheers that erupted from the crowd, and the goal was disallowed.

Multiple chances for both teams during the remainder of the game to either come back or seal the game went unrealized, and the game ended at 2-0, marking Jackson's fourth shutout of the season. She has the second-best goals-against average in Division I with 0.20.

Princeton is now tied with Penn in the Ivy League, each with three wins. The Tigers will not face the Quakers, however, until they host them the last game of the season.