HOUSTON >> The late-season surge by the Hawaii soccer team came to a screeching halt last night in the Western Athletic Conference tournament before 350 fans at the Rice Track/Soccer Stadium. Wahine eliminated
by host RiceFrom staff and wire reports
The Wahine were blanked by host Rice 2-0 in a first-round match. The Owls (4-12-2) won their third-consecutive match, longest in the team's two-year history, and advance to play Texas-El Paso (15-2-0) tonight in a semifinal match.
Balls bouncing around loose in the goal area are a mistake waiting to be turned into a positive for a team on offense. That was the case for the sixth-seeded Owls, who scored both goals off corner kicks when the UH defense was unable to successfully clear a bouncing ball.
Sophomore defender Caitlin Currie scored both Rice goals. They were the first of her career.
After a scoreless first half, the Owls broke through at 65:17 when Natasha Kai's head-shot clear of Kristen Lindsay's corner kick rolled out to Currie. She nailed a hard shot with her right foot from 20 yards out that found the net.
UH had a wonderful opportunity at 43 minutes when Kai chipped a ball into the open goal mouth, but Natalie Groenewoud's first-time attempt from 7 yards out was wide.
"That ball bounced around on the goal line so long it wasn't even funny," UH coach Pinsoom Tenzing said.
Kai was sent on a breakaway by Arlene Devitt with UH down 1-0 and about 15 minutes left. The WAC Player of the Year was pulled down in the penalty box as she was about to shoot, Tenzing said, but no foul was whistled.
Currie, waiting at the top of the penalty box, iced the match for the Owls when she scored again at 81:41 after a free ball bounced right to her feet after a corner kick. She fired and watched the ball ricochet off a UH defender into the net.
"We could have won 4-0, but sometimes peculiar things happen on the field," Tenzing said. "It was a combination of many things: the smaller field, being on the road so long, Rice's physical play, which you saw in Hawaii, and the crowd, which chanted 'overrated' every time Natasha touched the ball. We never do that to anyone in Hawaii.
"But those kind of things happen. This is a very big disappointment, but what can you say?"
The Hawaii (10-8-2) offense that has scored more goals than any other in the nine-year history of the program was held to seven shots, just two on goal, by a close-marking Rice defense. The Wahine averaged almost 20 shots a match before last night.
Kai and Arlene Devitt, UH's dynamic offensive threat, were limited to five shots.
The match was played on a field smaller than the Wahine are accustomed to, and their tactic of sending high balls over the defense for the strikers to track down was not very effective, as many of those long balls went right to the Rice goalkeeper.
Fresno State 4, Tulsa 0: The fourth-seeded Bulldogs tied a school record with 27 shots to produce their highest goal output of the season in the rout of the fifth-seeded Golden Hurricane (7-8-4).
Katri Nokso-Koivisto, a freshman and a member of Finland's National Team, and Kortney Lewis, a freshman from Visalia, Calif., each scored two goals.
FSU (7-12-0) plays defending league champion Southern Methodist (10-5-4) in today's first match.
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