Texas A&M Soccer
"It was five starters for a stretch there. Luckily for us, we were able to get Stephanie Malherbe back for limited action last Thursday in the South Carolina game and I thought that she did great, and probably could have gone further than the 60 minutes that she was able to play. She's back now and will be able to play. Ashlynn Harryman now has come back in and she's been training with us this week so she becomes available for us again. Emily Bates is still a day-to-day decision as far as what's going to happen with that. She was a big part of our post-season run last year and we're going to have to make another run like that to get into the post-season so we'd like to get her back as soon as we possible can."
"I think if there's a common good in what this team does every day is they really work hard. You come out to our games, we have a lot of inexperienced players out there but there's no shortage of fight. There's no shortage of heart and what they're putting into it. Experience and quality - and quality comes a lot of times from experience - are the things that losing those five players for a while, that was a drain on our quality. But the ladies that went in put in everything that they could. We had some unfortunate issues go against us that we didn't get the call for or we didn't get the bounce or whatever the situation was. We have to now turn that around against a very athletic and determined side in Mizzou."
"I think you can look at Dani Rice. Start from the back. There's a lot of players that are like that but Dani has been a real rock for our defense. Our defense is as good as it's been for many years. I think the stability of her back there, the stability of her personality and they way she goes about every day, the players look at her and know that they respect her. They know that what she has done has been pretty remarkable in the 18 months that she's been here since transferring in. She'd be the first one. But really you can go throughout the team. This is a team of quality people and very smart people. You look at our captains. Grace Wright is the epitome of what you would want from someone with a professional attitude. Same thing with McKayla Paulson. Same thing with Mikaela Harvey. Those three players are all dynamite for us. Now we get a chance to get Malherbe back. Now we get a chance to try and put some people in different positions to kind of spread out our experience to help us out in some very important games."
"The best thing we were able to do is recover. Television moved our game. The South Carolina game was going to be on a Friday night and they moved it up to Thursday. That didn't help us for that particular game because it was one less day of recovery. But it gave us recovery on the other side so since last Thursday night it's been a lot of rehabilitation, a lot of therapy going on with a lot of players. Some of that therapy was emotional, they were able to go home and be around family and friends, which is fantastic. This week has just been a matter of focusing on us. We have to get better. Do what we do as well as we possibly can. Missouri is going to come in and give us some unique challenges that we have got to be able to step up to but it still is about what we do and how we get better every day."
Checking in with Texas A&M soccer head coach G Guerrieri
On injury updates...
"It was five starters for a stretch there. Luckily for us, we were able to get Stephanie Malherbe back for limited action last Thursday in the South Carolina game and I thought that she did great, and probably could have gone further than the 60 minutes that she was able to play. She's back now and will be able to play. Ashlynn Harryman now has come back in and she's been training with us this week so she becomes available for us again. Emily Bates is still a day-to-day decision as far as what's going to happen with that. She was a big part of our post-season run last year and we're going to have to make another run like that to get into the post-season so we'd like to get her back as soon as we possible can."
On the team's strong work ethic...
"I think if there's a common good in what this team does every day is they really work hard. You come out to our games, we have a lot of inexperienced players out there but there's no shortage of fight. There's no shortage of heart and what they're putting into it. Experience and quality - and quality comes a lot of times from experience - are the things that losing those five players for a while, that was a drain on our quality. But the ladies that went in put in everything that they could. We had some unfortunate issues go against us that we didn't get the call for or we didn't get the bounce or whatever the situation was. We have to now turn that around against a very athletic and determined side in Mizzou."
On team standouts...
"I think you can look at Dani Rice. Start from the back. There's a lot of players that are like that but Dani has been a real rock for our defense. Our defense is as good as it's been for many years. I think the stability of her back there, the stability of her personality and they way she goes about every day, the players look at her and know that they respect her. They know that what she has done has been pretty remarkable in the 18 months that she's been here since transferring in. She'd be the first one. But really you can go throughout the team. This is a team of quality people and very smart people. You look at our captains. Grace Wright is the epitome of what you would want from someone with a professional attitude. Same thing with McKayla Paulson. Same thing with Mikaela Harvey. Those three players are all dynamite for us. Now we get a chance to get Malherbe back. Now we get a chance to try and put some people in different positions to kind of spread out our experience to help us out in some very important games."
On preparing for the match-ups against Missouri and Tennessee...
"The best thing we were able to do is recover. Television moved our game. The South Carolina game was going to be on a Friday night and they moved it up to Thursday. That didn't help us for that particular game because it was one less day of recovery. But it gave us recovery on the other side so since last Thursday night it's been a lot of rehabilitation, a lot of therapy going on with a lot of players. Some of that therapy was emotional, they were able to go home and be around family and friends, which is fantastic. This week has just been a matter of focusing on us. We have to get better. Do what we do as well as we possibly can. Missouri is going to come in and give us some unique challenges that we have got to be able to step up to but it still is about what we do and how we get better every day."
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