Women’s Soccer: Pitt continues Big East slide

Big East play has not been kind to the Pitt women’s soccer team. Following last weekend’s…

Pitt has struggled since beginning its conference slate, going 0-3-1.

Hualei Wang, senior staff photographer

Big East play has not been kind to the Pitt women’s soccer team. Following last weekend’s losses at conference foes Notre Dame and DePaul, Pitt (5-7-1) remains winless against conference opposition in its last season before joining the ACC.

Despite promising results during the non-conference portion of their schedule, the Panthers are now 0-3-1 in conference play and have been outscored 11-2 and outshot 99-19 in those four games.

Pitt head coach Greg Miller feels the shooting stats mislead.

“The ball could be 25 yards over the goal or 20 yards wide and it constitutes a shot,” Miller said.

But he does admit the team’s inability to possess has hindered its performance.

“Our biggest problem is we can’t keep the ball,” he said. “We are simply giving it away too much, turning it over in bad spots and that leads to too many shots and corners and also means we aren’t getting any offense started ourselves.”

Notre Dame 2, Pittsburgh 1

Despite feeling confident going into the match, Pitt struggled once the whistle blew.

“We had a pretty good game plan, intensity, and energy in the pregame,” Miller said. “Notre Dame is a very good team; young, but very talented, and they were able to put a lot of nice stuff together. They fired a lot of shots, but Nicole [sophomore goalkeeper Nicole D’Agostino] was able to keep us in the game.”

Notre Dame (6-3-1, 3-0-0 in Big East) took a 1-0 lead from a goal in the 16th minute. The Fighting Irish then added to their lead just 14 minutes into the second half. Pitt senior and career goals leader Ashley Cuba put the Panthers on the board in the 86th minute, finding a loose ball in front of the net for her second score of the season and pulling Pitt within one goal late in the game.

“We had a corner kick, and they cleared it out,” Cuba said. “We got it back and put it to the back corner like we are taught. I worked my way into the box and the ball ricocheted off a player’s chest and I was there to put it in.”

D’Agostino made seven saves in the loss. After the weekend, she had the second-most saves in the Big East at 59. Notre Dame outshot Pitt 21-6 (9-2 on goal) in the game. Cuba finished the game with four shots — one of which was on goal.

“We were able to score a sloppy goal late and changed formation to try and manufacture the tying goal in the closing minutes, but we weren’t able to get it,” she said. “Overall, though, I was pleased with the execution of our team. I really thought we played well against a quality opponent.”

DePaul 4, Pittsburgh 0

“Against DePaul, our consistency, energy and effort just weren’t there in a very winnable game,” Miller said. “Give credit to DePaul, we simply didn’t match their intensity. Our soccer just was never great.”

After going into halftime tied at zero, the Panthers imploded in the second half and DePaul (7-4-1, 2-1-0 in Big East) handed Pitt its second loss of the weekend. The Blue Demons broke the game open with three goals in a four-minute span, and added an insurance goal later in the half.

“Nicole kept us in the game again with some sick saves in the first half,” Miller said. “But we came out slow in the second. I didn’t expect this outcome. I felt like this was a very winnable game. If we had the intensity and energy from Friday, I think we could have won, but we were just never in the game mentally, and that’s frustrating.”

D’Agostino made seven saves on 10 shots and redshirt senior Kristina Rioux played the last 24 minutes in the net, saving two of three shots. Cuba, sophomore Taylor Parisse and freshman Janna Brown all finished with one shot on net.

“It’s frustrating,” D’Agostino said. “You can’t win if you can’t score goals and right now it seems the best we can do is tie. The defense and goaltending can only do so much. We need to all get back in sync with each other and then we will start winning again. Everybody needs to have the right attitude this week in practice and going into this weekend.”

Pittsburgh hosts Villanova and No. 19-ranked Georgetown on Friday, Sept. 28, and Sunday, Sept. 30, respectively. Both games will be played at Ambrose Urbanic Field.