Texas A&M
South Carolina
Aggies Play to 2-2 Tie with South Carolina
Oct 26, 2014 | Soccer
COLLEGE STATION, Texas – The No. 6 Texas A&M Aggies came up a minute shy of a victory and settled for a 2-2 draw against the No. 21 South Carolina Gamecocks on Sunday afternoon at Ellis Field.
With the tie, Texas A&M's record moved to 14-2-2 overall and 8-1-1 in the SEC. The Aggies' 25 points gives the Maroon and White a one-point lead over Florida (24 points – 8-2-0) with one match remaining on the season. Texas A&M hosts Georgia in a 7 pm contest on Thursday. Florida hosts Vanderbilt in a 6 pm contest on Thursday.
Trailing 2-1 with the clock headed towards the 90th minute, South Carolina dumped the ball into the attacking third. The Aggies stopped the initial attack, but were unsuccessful in the clear and the ball settled to the feet of Stevi Parker. The Gamecocks' midfielder sent in a low liner from 20 yards out, to the right of a diving Jordan Day for the equalizer with 1:00 remaining in the second half.
Neither squad was able to mount a meaningful attack in the two 10-minute overtime periods, leaving the teams with the 2-2 draw. A&M outshot South Carolina in the overtime periods, 3-1, but there were no shots-on-goal logged.
With the wind to their back, South Carolina drew first blood in the 34th minute. Andie Romness took a free kick from 40 yards out on the left. The wind-aided offering entered a mass of chaos near the of 6-yard box, took one hop and went into the goal untouched for the 1-0 lead.
A&M knotted the game with less than two minutes remaining in the first half. Liz Keester took a corner kick from the left arc. Her offering fought the wind to get to the near post where Janae Cousineau put her head on it to tie the game at 1-1 with 1:26 on the clock. It marked the sixth straight match that Cousineau scored a goal, the first A&M player to score in six straight matches since Linsey Woodard in 2002.
Coming out of the intermission, the Aggies wasted no time putting the ball into the goal. South Carolina took the opening kick of the half, but A&M intercepted the second pass and pushed the ball to Kelley Monogue to the attacking side of the center arc. Monogue sent the ball forward to Annie Kunz and charged to the right corner of the penalty box. Kunz dished back to Monogue and the senior sent a shot from 15 yards out on the right side, tucking it into the right post for the go-ahead goal 13 seconds into the half.
The Aggies outshot South Carolina 9-6 for the remainder of the second half, but were only able to get one shot-on-goal.
Texas A&M's two goals marked just the second time this season that an opponent notched multiple goals against the Gamecocks.
Sabrina D'Angelo made three saves in 110 minutes for South Carolina. Renée McDermott played the first half for A&M, making one save and allowing a goal. Day played the second half and both overtime periods, making two saves and allowing one goal in 65 minutes.
TEXAS A&M QUOTES
Head Coach G Guerrieri
On the game…
"Give credit to South Carolina. They played a hard-fought game. I thought that we played a fantastic 89 minutes, but unfortunately the game is 90 minutes long."
Senior forward Shea Groom
On the game…
"This is definitely a tough way to end the weekend, we certainly had higher expectations of our team. You have to give a lot of credit to South Carolina. They've had a heck of a turnaround at the end of their season and they wanted it more today. But that doesn't mean that we're going to quit and lay down. We still have an opportunity to win this conference, so we just need to get our minds right and prepare this week and go win a championship on Thursday."
