Texas A&M
Oklahoma
Aggies Win Fifth Straight, Down OU 6-1
Sep 29, 2006 | Soccer
September 29, 2006
The 8th-ranked Texas A&M soccer team scored early and often as six different Aggies found the back of the net to beat Big 12 conference rival Oklahoma, 6-1, in front of 3,819 fans at the Aggie Soccer Stadium.
Texas A&M immediately stepped up the defensive pressure on Oklahoma (3-8-0, 0-4-0) from the opening kickoff, registering their first shot and first of 15 corner kicks in the game?™s first minute.
Junior midfielder Allison Martino got the Aggies on the scoreboard in the eighth minute when she took on three Sooner defenders inside their penalty area before dragging a pass back across the face of the goal where freshman midfielder Amber Gnatzig stroked an inside of the foot shot past OU goalkeeper Jennifer Nichols from 15 yards out. The goal was Gnatzig?™s fifth of the season.
The Aggies led 1-0 for the next seven minutes, but OU got a quick counter-attack and Daphne Fitzpatrick scored on OU?™s first shot of the game, tying the match at one all.
?Giving up a goal like that, in the manner it was scored, was a bit of a wake up call for us,? said A&M head coach G Guerrieri. ?They did a good job on the counter and really made us pay for the mistake; however I was pleased with the way our defense tightened up after that.?
Madison Klovstad scored what would be the eventual game-winner three minutes after the OU goal, when she bent a corner kick directly into the Sooner goal.
Three minutes after that, Martino again terrorized the OU defense and drilled a low hard cross into the goal mouth for senior forward Suzzette Devloo to bury, upping the Aggie advantage to 3-1. The goal was Devloo?™s fifth in the past four games.
Junior midfielder Amy Berend tallied the Aggies?™ fourth goal of the first half when she stole the ball from an OU midfielder 25 yards from goal, turned and took a preparation touch, then hammered a laser of a shot past Nichols into the goal?™s upper right corner.
With just a few minutes remaining in the first half of play, freshman forward Cydne Currie combined with junior forward Melissa Garey inside the center of the OU penalty area, and Garey beat the keeper from point blank range to make the score 5-1 at halftime.
Currie finished off the scoring in the 48th minute, when she tapped in another Aggie end-line cross, this time from junior midfielder Elisabeth Jones, making the final score 6-1 for Texas A&M.
Allison Martino was named the State Farm Player of the Game for her two assists on the night, her fourth and fifth in the Aggies?™ last two games.
?This was a physically challenging run for us,? said Guerrieri. ?We just completed a 10-day span in which we played (and won) five games. I am glad that all of our healthy players got into the game again tonight. This was yet another great squad victory for us.?
Texas A&M remains atop the Big 12 conference?™s soccer standings with a perfect 4-0-0 league record and a 8-3-1 record for the full season.
The Aggies will take to the road next weekend as they face the Colorado Buffaloes in Boulder on Friday at 5 p.m. and the Kansas Jayhawks in Lawrence at 1 p.m. on Sunday.
