The Massachusetts women’s soccer team is hoping to return to its winning ways when it takes on the Davidson Thursday night in North Carolina.
Coming off of their first conference loss of the season in a 1-0 defeat to George Mason, the Minutewomen (9-3-1, 4-1-1 Atlantic 10) have been in bit of an offensive slump lately, scoring one goal or less in four out of their last five contests.
“All we did today [at practice] was see the ball go in the net,” UMass coach Jason Dowiak said. “We did a lot of focus practice on finishing and purposeful movement.”
The offense begins with the forwards, and junior forward Rebeca Frisk will be looking to contribute to the scoring on Thursday night. Frisk has tallied six goals and 15 points up to this point in the season.
“We’ve definitely been working on [our offense],” Frisk said. “Working on being more dynamic is really all we can do. Me and [Erin] Doster being on the same page with Lauren [Bonavita] and Kelly [Marra] and getting everyone together so that way we can anticipate the play.”
Senior forward Erin Doster has been a key contributor to the Minutewomen offense lately as she scored the lone goal for the team in their 1-1 draw against Fordham. Doster says the team must capitalize on more of their scoring chances going forward if they want to return to the success that they enjoyed at the beginning of the season.
“We create chances every single game,” Doster said. “There’s no doubt about that if you look at the box score and watch the game but we haven’t been as cutthroat as we were at the beginning of the season in terms of finishing. Even the games we’ve won, we could’ve won by a lot more so we just need to be more clinical in front of the net really because we’re making the chances.”
UMass has a tough schedule going forward as they still have to play two of the top teams in the A-10: VCU and Saint Louis. For now, Dowiak says that they must focus on closing games out on the offensive side of play, which they have struggled to do in the past few games.
“We got really comfortable in the final third of the last four games and that’s why we’re not scoring,” Dowiak said. “[Our players] aren’t tuned in to finish the moment so we’ve just been on them this practice.”
The opportunities haven’t been a problem as the Minutewomen outshot their opponent once again Sunday afternoon despite the loss by a 15-7 margin. They will look to take advantage of the Wildcat’s defense Thursday night, which has allowed at least two goals in each of their last five games.
Ethan Nash can be reached at [email protected] and followed on twitter @ethan_nash15.
