I continue to be puzzled by the quiet start of very capable and previously dominant attacking players like Pounds, Watt, and Bates. All three were neutralized tonight and couldn't find a way to leave a distinct mark on the game. Perhaps it's the formation? Something's just not clicking in our attack.

Obviously a disappointing result tonight against a better than expected OSU side. The physical teams have always been A&M's weakness and the Cowboys really asserted their presence and played a rough style of soccer. We always complain about it but the book on Coach G teams is out there and pretty much everyone knows that's how you beat us.

But really this team shouldn't be struggling with the OSU's of the world this season; there is too much talent on the roster to struggle to put away chances when you have such a dominating offensive stat sheet. A&M has scored 5 goals and 3 of them are by defenders. The forwards have 1 goal (Pounds). The touches in the final third really aren't good enough and many times they don't make contact on good passes/crosses into the box. And it doesn't help that Pounds missed a point blank shot in front of goal with 3 seconds left. Watt has had a very shaky start to the season and really hasn't had many true shots on goal at all. Bates does hustle and had some opportunities, but the shots and passes/crosses were poor.

The good news is that Malherbe has returned to form and is clearly the best player on this team right now and she is flying around the field with skill on the ball and makes good passes. There is an obvious difference in the team when she's in the game. It's really amazing the difference between last year and this year for her and of course her individual effort on the go ahead goal with 7 minutes left was a thing of beauty. As someone else already mentioned, the possession in the midfield was not consistent and it got a bit jerky in the 2nd half. There is too much dribbling around without purpose and we missed some obvious through balls in space that could have been scoring opportunities. I think some of it was frustration because we couldn't possess the ball long enough to create better chances. Why Hajdu didn't play more I don't know but she didn't look injured.

The risk of 3 on the backline is that it's vulnerable to counter attacks and tonight we saw more of it as the midfield couldn't get back to help at times. This results in some panicked play and confusion, which we saw play out on the own goal in the 1st half. And giving up a goal with 4 minutes left is never good. I also thought GK play was shaky as well with some indecision at times. I'd like to see Ausmus get some more chances in front of goal. Lopez is very talented and has really nice passes into the box - we just need to connect on them more.

A&M really doesn't have much room for error now if the goal is to get a #1 seed. Let's hope OSU has a really good year to help with the RPI. Of course I could be completely wrong about this team and maybe we're just a good but not great team, but that would be squander a lot of talent (at least on paper). A&M needs to put teams away early so we don't have to work so hard in the final moments of a game.