RE Maya Neal: Pensky can rave about her all he wants but she's certainly not a top centerback. She does a lot of good things with her athleticism and speed, uses her body well--but her play is far too erratic--makes too many mistakes. Her passing is suspect--one third of her passes to Jennings, the outside back on her side, go out of bounds--and those should be easy when neither she nor Jennings is under pressure. She also does not know how to weight her passes--she often puts too much pace on the ball, making it hard for the player receiving the ball to control it. She botches plays--yesterday she let a ball go past her that got to a breaking Missouri forward--and had it not been for a great save by Yanez we would have been down 0-2. And, YES: She lacks composure because she is constantly clearing balls out of bounds when she is not being pressed by an opposing player. It's just giving the ball right back to the opponent. She should controlling the ball so that we can keep it and possess it out of the back. And of course yesterday she also fouled Missouri's best player in the box, giving them a penalty kick that was converted and put us behind. Not a good day for her. She has to be better if we expect to really grow as a team.
It's hard overstate how huge that comeback win was. The difference between 3-2-1 and 4-1-1 is massive when we are trying to stay near the top of a tough conference. Had we lost, we'd have been back with the pack again--and with three tough games ahead, that is not a situation we wanted to be in. Missouri is not having a good year--but they've played some good teams and I had feeling this would be a tough game: A long road trip after a wild game on Thursday, an opponent hungry for a win at home--it had all the makings of a trap game. We looked beaten--but credit Shaw, Bialczak and Gilroy for saving the day late, O'Keefe too. O'Keefe got the ball wide to Shaw, who sent a ball into the box; Bialczak got forward and put the ball on goal with a decent (though not great strike)--and Kilroy swooped in to put it in the net after the Missouri keeper let it squirt out of her hands. Shaw's free kick to win the game was pure class--and I'm sure it was very satisfying for her as she was frustrated all day by Missouri's focus on her. The Tiger coach put his biggest defender on Shaw, and she was glued to the UT player for most of the game.
We actually played well and controlled play for at least the first 25 minutes of the first half--or until Missouri scored the first goal--and we played well to start the second half, tying the game on an impressive run and strik by goal Vignola. Our midfield is becoming more assertive in attack--especially Bialczak--and that is crucial as we can't rely on Shaw all the time--especially because she is now getting a lot of attention from our opponents, as one would expect. We put a lot of pressure on Missouri for extended stretches--but struggled to convert that pressure into goals.
But I didn't like the way we played in the last 20-25 minutes when we were behind 1-2. We lost our composure a bit and did not possess the ball very much--starting playing very direct, trying long passes to Shaw, and were just too unsettled. We were throwing the body around too much, too, and were lucky we didn't get a couple of yellow cards. But we got it together when we needed to, to the team's credit. There are a lot of things to like about this team, but I don't think our back four is good enough to beat any elite teams. They'll get changes to prove otherwise when we play Vandy, Arkansas and Florida.
