Temple women’s soccer played to a 1-1 draw with the University of Maryland in College Park, Maryland Thursday night.
For the second time in the last three games, Temple (1-3-2) played for 110 minutes to finish in a tie. Junior defender Marissa DiGenova scored the tying goal in the 90th minute off an assist from sophomore midfielder Hailey Gutowski.
Maryland (3-2-2) dominated the match with 11 shots on net while Temple had four.
“Maryland came at us out of the gun,” coach Seamus O’Connor said. “It took us a little bit of time to settle in, about 50 minutes, but once we got there we started to move really fast. You can tell then that the bubble had burst for Maryland and that we started to come back.”
Maryland had two strong chances on net from the start. Freshman forward Kaylee Kozlowski got a chance inside the box in the fourth minute, but senior goalkeeper Morgan Basileo punched it away. In the 11th minute, redshirt-sophomore forward Alyssa Poarch played a through ball to junior forward Mikayla Dayes who managed to beat three defenders. Basileo came out to defend the shot, but Dayes got it past her. As Basileo and the rest of the defenders looked on, the shot missed just wide of the post.
In the 37th minute, sophomore forward Emily McNesby collected a ball lobbed over the top of the Owls’ defense. Surrounded by defenders and Basileo, she wasn’t able to put a shot on net, but she kept control and passed off to freshman forward Keyerra Wynn. Wynn took one touch and lofted it over Basileo and into the back of the net for the 1-0 lead.
Temple had a chance to equalize just before the first half whistle blew. Junior defender Djavon Dupree passed off to senior forward Morgan Morocco inside the box. Morocco was able to get a shot off, but it went wide right of the net.
Basileo made a kick save in the 74th minute to keep the deficit to one.
Temple started to pick up the offensive intensity in the second half. They recorded nine shots, with three of those coming on goal as the game waned on.
The offensive efforts paid off late. Gutowski led the attack on goal and found DiGenova inside the box. DiGenova was one-on-one with the Maryland keeper and beat her, burying the ball to tie the game at 1-1. It was DiGenova’s first goal in her Temple career.
Just as the Terrapins controlled the beginning of the game, the Owls controlled overtime. While they had several chances to end the game during the 20 minutes of overtime, their best chance came during the final seconds of the second overtime period.
On a free kick, DiGenova sent a shot on net that beat the goalkeeper, but it hit the crossbar. The ball bounced off and found Morocco. She got her head on it and sent it on goal, but the Maryland goalkeeper made the save.
O’Connor said he and the entire team thought the ball went in, so when they saw it hadn’t they were disappointed.
“The ball bounces off the crossbar comes down, and we don’t know if it went over the line or not,” O’Connor said. “The referee says play off and there’s a scramble. [Druehl] hit that ball as beautifully as I’ve seen her hit it and it somehow didn’t go in. Morgan twists her body and gets her head the back of her head on the ball. So when we saw the goalie with the ball it was just disappointing.”
Basileo once again had a strong gamen with 10 saves, making it the second time this season she’s made double-digit saves.
The rest of the defense stood their ground as well. Maryland had 18 corner kicks, but they weren’t able to convert on any of them due to the Temple backline of DiGenova, Dupree, Druehl and junior Arryana Daniels.
“The flow was tremendous,” O’Connor said. “They came up against really elite level attackers and stopped them. Every one of our defenders is going to be in pain tomorrow, but I couldn’t be more proud of them.”
Temple will look to get back in the win column on Sunday afternoon when they travel to play Rider University.
“I do think it’s going to be interesting for us to see how this week could almost an exact replica of last week,” O’Connor said. “We played great last Thursday night. Now what happens on Sunday? Can we respond with another great performance?”
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