The women's soccer team lost their first home game of the season on Friday, as they fell to No. 21 Marquette, 4-0.
The Golden Eagles got on the board early with a fourth-minute goal off the foot of forward Rachael Sloan who fended off freshman defender D'Yonna Riley. Sloan placed the ball into the far post, passed outstretched freshman goalkeeper Gina Maiorana.
Maiorana's night got tougher from there as she faced 18 shots and let up four goals overall. Marquette scored two mor first-half goals from Rachel Brown in the thirteenth minute on a header off a corner and then from Katie Reigle who scored on a cross.
However, at halftime Coach Kazbek Tambi made some tactical changes that he said proved to be helpful.
"At halftime we talked about putting more pressure on Marquette because they had way too much space in the middle of the field," Tambi said. "I feel like we did a good job adjusting in that regard and we needed a little bit of a break to get back into the game."
In the second half the Pirates contained Marquette and even created a little offense of their own.
Eight minutes into the second half the Pirates had one of their best chances of the night when Meghan Hayes had a header off a corner blocked and cleared out of Marquette's box.
Ten minutes later the Pirates may have had their closest opportunity to make a game of it slip through their hands. On a counter attack junior midfielder Amie Ruhe sent in a low cross that made its way through three defenders but there was no one to be found in the box to put the ball away.
As time quickly began to run out Marquette put away its fourth and final goal of the night in the 80th minute, scored by Ashley Stemmeler.
With their next game coming up on Sunday against the University of South Florida, the Pirates will look to bounce back.
"We're going to take whatever we did not do well today and try to make adjustments and not let it happen again and focus on the next game," said junior midfielder Marie Klemme. "This game is now in the past."
The Pirates will look for their seventh win of the season as they face USF at 1p.m. on Sunday at Owen T. Carroll Field.
Kenny Lenoci can be reached at Kenneth.Lenoci@student.shu.edu
