Coming off just their third loss of the season, the women's soccer team must try to rebound quickly with the Big East Championship in sight as they head out on a two-game road trip to end the regular season. UConn (11-3-1, 7-1-1 Big East) will travel to Queens, N.Y. to face St. John's (9-5-2, 4-5) tonight and then head upstate to finish the regular season against Syracuse (6-7-4, 2-5-2).
Sunday the No. 18 Huskies lost to Big East National Division leader No. 15 Notre Dame (11-4-1, 9-0) in a physically-intense overtime match that ended in a 2-1 Irish victory. The loss snapped a conference-best 11-game unbeaten streak for UConn and was also the first time the defense, which has been stellar all year, allowed multiple goals in one game.
"We did well and we had the chances to score another goal," said head coach Len Tsantiris, adding that the defense played well, catching a tough break on Notre Dame's goal which came from a corner kick that found the back of the net.
Long weekend road trips can be a grind for a team, especially late in the season, which is one of the reasons why Tsantiris felt that Notre Dame was able to catch up to and overtake the Huskies despite UConn holding the lead until the 85th minute.
"Psychologically, I think that's the problem," Tsantiris said. "When you're on the road for four days and it's the last day, you just don't have the energy if you played Friday, and Friday was not an easy game."
Tsantiris isn't one to dwell on the loss and the fact that UConn must now travel for the second straight weekend to finish the season.
"It's disappointing, but the bottom line is we did play well," he said.
However, not everything went against the Huskies last weekend. By beating DePaul 2-1 Friday night, they clinched a first-round bye and home-field-advantage for, at the very least the quarterfinals, which will be held Nov. 4 at Morrone Stadium.
UConn can finish no worse than second in the Big East American Division and currently has a better overall record than No. 19 West Virginia, whom the Huskies beat 2-0 on Oct. 14. Both teams have identical conference records of 7-1-1.
"We're ready to play," Tsantiris said. "We have to get good results this weekend."
If they finish first, they're likely opponent will either be Rutgers, whom the Huskies played to a 0-0 double-overtime tie on Oct. 5 or Seton Hall, whom the Huskies defeated 2-1 in overtime on Oct. 7. In other words, the American Division's top seed won't guarantee an easy quarterfinal match.
Should West Virginia finish first in the division, UConn will likely face Georgetown (12-5, 5-4), which currently has the most overall wins of any team in the Big East.
Tsantiris and the team aren't thinking about all of that just yet, though. As far as they're concerned, priority one is winning the final two games of the season and avoiding the strain of travel this time around.
"Those two games [against St. John's and Syracuse] are most important to us right now," he said.
St. John's started the season hot, going unbeaten in their first 10 games of the season. Since then they've cooled off considerably, losing five of their last eight and getting shut out four times over that span. All five losses have come against conference opponents.
Syracuse has experienced much more of a rollercoaster ride this season as the team has neither won nor lost more than one game in a row. Despite that, the Orange have shown they can hang with the tougher competition playing No. 15 Boston College to a scoreless tie and playing Big East powers West Virginia and Marquette to 1-1 ties.
Tsantiris mentioned the team must be more organized defensively and offensively and maintain consistency throughout the games to make this final weekend a successful one.
Contact Mike Northup at Michael.Northup@UConn.edu.
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