Soccer: Ags defeast Arizona State 3-1, move to 2-1 on season

For the second Friday in a row, the Texas A&M soccer team was faced with playing the Devils.

Last Friday, the No. 19 Aggies suffered a disappointing loss to the No. 7 Duke Blue Devils but this week’s contest against the visiting Arizona State Sun Devils was a different story.

On Friday evening, the Aggies defeated Arizona State 3-1 in front of an announced crowd of 1,972 at Ellis Field. With the victory, the Aggies move to 2-1 on the season and 2-0 all-time against the Sun Devils.

“I think it was a really good win for us,” said A&M head coach G Guerrieri. “Arizona State is going to win a lot of games this year and this is another game we can build from. We scored three goals which is more than we have put together all season long.”

In the 18th minute, A&M broke a scoreless tie on a rocket from junior midfielder Kelley Monogue. Monogue fielded a pass from junior Leigh Edwards and found a little room to her right where she launched her shot into the bottom left corner of the goal, giving the Ags the early 1-0 lead.

“We worked all week on [finishing opportunities],” stated Guerrieri. “That goal was set up because we were able to establish width in our attack and it created a nice pocket in their defense that Monogue was able to take advantage of.”

Shortly after, freshman Liz Keester added another goal for A&M in the 21st minute when she found the back of the net in the lower right 90 past a diving Sun Devils goal keeper Chandler Morris. The goal was Keester’s first in an A&M uniform.

“The Liz Keester goal was pure hard work,” stated Guerrieri. “That’s what Lizzie does. We’ll take those as thumbs-up moments.”

But the Sun Devils didn’t roll over and eventually got on the board, scoring on an unusual play in the 52nd minute. With A&M keeper Jordan Day out of the goal to field a pass, Arizona State forward Cali Farquharson found the ball and shot into an open net to cut the Aggie lead to 2-1.

“I thought our defense had an absolute brain-fart to give them that goal,” said Guerrieri. “We’ve got to learn from that and the best way to learn is to play against top competition.”

A&M earned their final goal of the game with less than seven minutes to play off the foot of junior forward Allie Bailey when she redirected a lob from Karlie Mueller into the back of the net. The goal was Bailey’s first of the season and closed any last hopes the Sun Devils had of coming back and tying the game.

Now, the Aggies must shift their focus to a Sunday afternoon contest with Pepperdine. In order to properly prepare for the Waves, Guerrieri doesn’t plan to have his team out in the sun for three-plus hours on Saturday for A&M’s football game against Rice.

“We don’t do that,” said Guerrieri in regards to standing in the heat at football games. “We are being introduced during the second quarter, so we’ll be in the shade for the first half.

“Then we’ll start to prepare for Sunday.”