The Lady Lions secured a spot in this week’s Southland Conference Tournament as a fifth seed and finished the regular season (11-6-1) after losing Friday’s match-up against the Texas State Bobcats. They bounced back with a win at home Sunday against the UTSA Roadrunners.  

“Our performance was really good after Friday’s game, where we were dominating the whole game and we just lost it at the end,” said junior forward Maiya Cooper. “This is a good game to show that we can finish when we are dominating.”

During Friday’s match, Bobcat midfielder Taylor Kelley scored the winning goal during overtime to disappoint head coach Blake Hornbuckle and his Lady Lions who had control of the ball for most of the game.

“We played well today,” said Hornbuckle in a Lionsports.net press release. “We just wound up on the wrong side of things.”

Things would prove different on Saturday as the Lady Lions secured a rebuttal win against the Roadrunners who beat them in the 2010 tournament finals.  

“We lost it in the finals last year and we just wanted to get it back. We just had to win,” said Cooper.

Junior midfielder Karly Dagys scored the winning goal with 15:27 left in the second period with an assist from Cooper.  

“I just tried to stay composed and I saw the ball coming,” said Dagys on the score. “I noticed that at that time I was open so I just focused and placed it where it needed to go so thankfully it went in.”

During the first half, fouls were heavy against the Roadrunners who ended the game with a total of 10, forcing the ball to stay on their side of the field for much of that half. “The first half, all the balls were kind of in the air, but we talked about the second half. We kind of wanted all the balls on the ground,” said Cooper. “We played a lot better and got through to each other.”  

There were three attempted shots by the Lions during the first period as Cooper and midfielder Kerry McWhirter showed great ball control on offense but never executed a goal while Roadrunners Charlotte Husoe, Jodi Leroy and Katie Dugan triple teamed on defense.

Roadrunners Llaylla da Cruz and Alex Saraceno, showed an immense amount of effort hoping to boost momentum on offense but the lack of shots attempted were costly for their team.

On defense the Lady Lions saw junior midfielder Lauren Stillians make several break-a-way attempts while often keeping the ball airborne towards the Roadrunners defensive end. Stillians would end the game with an attempted shot from midfield. McWhirter would end the game with four attempted shots, the most attempted by an individual player during Sunday’s game.  

Now that the Lady Lions have closed out the regular season, they will head to Natchitoches Thursday Nov. 3, to start the Southland Conference Tournament. Coach Hornbuckle is pleased with his team’s effort so far this year, which has been a struggle on and off the field.

“Were pleased with our accomplishments,” said Hornbuckle on the season’s entirety. “We’ve had some battles to face this year, some adversities, some injuries. Soccer is a crazy game at times. Sometimes you can play well and not win the game. That’s occurred to us a few times unfortunately.”

Dagys talked about future match-ups with UTSA.

 “It’s always important to win games no matter what because we’ll probably be playing them next week in the tournament so it’s important to put a little fear in their eyes and know that they need to come out extra hard to beat us,” said Dagys.

The Lady Lions face UTSA in the first round of the SLC Tournament on Thursday Nov 3.