By Giovanni Gray, news staff
The Northeastern University (NU) women’s soccer team played its last set of non-conference games last weekend, netting a win and a loss against two other New England teams.
The Huskies ended their 11-game home win streak with a loss to Dartmouth College on Friday night in a rematch of last year’s overtime game against the Big Green. The Huskies out-cornered their opponents in the 3-1 loss, although they were outshot by Dartmouth.
Junior midfielder Carina Deandreis scored the Huskies’ lone goal in the 42nd minute, her first of the season. She was assisted by junior defender Mackenzie Dowd, who tallied 90 minutes of play in the contest.
NU entered the second half with a 1-0 advantage, but that became a 1-1 tie when Dartmouth scored off a corner kick in the 67th minute. Dartmouth went on to add another goal shortly after, in the 72nd minute, then capped off a 3-0 run with the game’s final score in the 82nd minute.
“I don’t want to say we got too comfortable, but I think that because we were up 1-0 and that we were controlling the game so well at first, we weren’t going at them as hard as we should’ve [in the second half],” redshirt junior midfielder Breeana Koemans said.
Dartmouth managed to both out-shoot and out-corner the Huskies in the second half, with totals of 6-2 and 3-0, respectively, while Northeastern committed 10 fouls in the period.
The Huskies had more success on Sunday when they traveled to the University of New Hampshire (UNH), winning 1-0.
“We were just coming off of a loss at our home field and we had a winning streak, so we were bouncing back from that,” Koemans said. “UNH is a difficult team – they kept battling throughout the entire game. A strength was our back line was more confident after playing against Dartmouth.”
The Huskies managed to out-shoot UNH 29-8 in the double overtime contest, while also out-cornering yet another team. NU has out-cornered every opponent this year. The team also posted 11 shots in each of the two regulation periods, while adding six more in the first overtime period. The final shot came in the 101st minute, by the leg of Koemans, who netted her second goal of the season.
The two weekend games mark the final non-conference contests the Huskies will play in the regular season. This weekend will be the squad’s first two Colonial Athletic Association (CAA) away matches against Elon University and the College of William & Mary.
“I don’t think it’s different motivation-wise because out of conference we want the win because it’ll help us with post-season play,” Koemans said of the team’s mentality headed into conference play. “But we’re back-to-back conference champs, and I think we have the same mindset – each game we take day by day. We look at each opponent differently and we just break down how to beat them.”
The Huskies will take on CAA opponents at home for the first time in a few weeks, facing off against the College of Charleston and the University of North Carolina at Wilmington on Oct. 2 and 4, respectively.
“We’re going to have to defend as a team extremely well, which we got better at throughout the season,” Koemans said. “Our offense is going to have to work really well together and be aggressive.”
Photo courtesy Jim Pierce, Northeastern Athletics.
