The Illinois State womens soccer team dropped their final conference game of the season to Drake, 1-0. It was the Birds first conference loss of the season and the loss gives Drake a piece of the Missouri Valley Conference regular season title along with the Redbirds.
With the win, the Bulldogs earned the No. 1 seed in the Valley Tournament and Illinois State gets the No. 2 seed. On Friday, November 7 at 7:30 p.m. at Sportport in Maryland Heights, Mo., the Redbirds will face the winner of the game between the No. 3 seed and the No. 6 seed.
The Redbirds came out fired up for Senior Day, but they just couldnt get their offense going. In fact, they didnt even take a shot until 24 minutes had already ticked off the clock in the first half. It didnt help matters that Drake seemed to get to balls faster than the Birds all day and they controlled the tempo for most of the game.
ISU was faced with a scary situation at the 37:37 mark when Drake was nearly able to score on a shot by Angela Craig. Craig had the ball and was met by defender Joyce Kleinheinz. They got a little tangled up and junior Heather Forsyth came up to help, but Craig was able to come out of the scrum with the ball. She was being chased down by Kleinheinz when she took a shot that looked as if it was going in but goalkeeper Allison Farrington was there to make the save.
But Illinois State wouldnt be so lucky later as Drakes Jennie Brown scored the lone goal of the contest with a little less than 20 minutes to go in the first half. Melissa Nelson passed the ball to Brown who dribbled around an Illinois State defender to the right side of the goal and took a shot that soared over Farringtons head and went in the far side of the net. That one goal was all the Bulldogs would need to get past the Redbirds to earn a piece of the Valley regular season title. Drakes goal was just the second time that a Valley opponent had scored on the Birds, after ISU was able to successful hold five Valley opponents scoreless this year. The Bulldogs increased their Valley record to 6-1 and their overall record to 12-6.
The Redbirds started the second half with the same intensity that they had shown in nearly every second half this season but they just couldnt get it done. The loss snaps Illinois States five game winning streak and their sweep of conference opponents. They fall to 6-1 in the Valley and 9-5-2 overall.
We came out flat today and we made a mistake and you cant give them a mistake, head coach Pete Kowall said. They took one good shot and they scored on it. You cant give good teams like that a chance, it just cant happen. Well watch the tape, learn from our mistakes and move on, but youve got to give them credit theyre a good ball club.
Illinois State will wrap up their regular season at home on Friday against Western Illinois at 3 p.m.
