South Carolina keeps Mississippi State winless in the SEC
The South Carolina women’s soccer team kept their SEC regular season title hopes alive this weekend by picking up a pair of much-needed wins. The Gamecocks defeated Vanderbilt 4-1 at home on Friday before traveling to Mississippi State, where they came away with a 1-0 win on Sunday.
With only one regular season game remaining, South Carolina sits a half-game back of Texas A&M and Florida.
South Carolina (14-2-2, 7-2-1 SEC) got its weekend off to a torrid start, scoring three goals in the first 15 minutes against the Commodores (4-11-3, 1-8-1 SEC). Taylor Leach’s header off Chelsea Drennan’s corner 90 seconds into the match served as the fifth-fastest goal in program history.
“That always helps,” head coach Shelley Smith said of the early goal. “You go into games where you’re struggling to score goals that you need and those are frustrating. I think we came off a weekend where that happened and we didn’t get the goals we wanted and had lots of chances but didn’t put it away, so it was nice to come out and put one of our first chances in the goal.”
Drennan assisted Raina Johnson’s goal in the 12th minute as well as Gabrielle Gilbert’s first goal of the season in the 15th minute.
“I felt like I was just supporting the three out front, you know? (I was) just trying to pour it off of them to give them opportunities to score to get us the win,” Drennan said.
With her three first-half assists, the freshman midfielder tied the school record for most assists in a game. Drennan is now tied for third-most assists in a season in program history with 10, three shy of the record of 13.
The Gamecocks outshot Vanderbilt 15-1 in the first half and 23-3 for the match.
“We knew we needed to come out super strong for Vanderbilt because we had kind of a weekend that we weren’t especially proud of the weekend before,” Johnson said.
The sophomore midfielder netted her second goal of the game and seventh of the season in the 56th minute to put South Carolina up 4-0.
Sunday’s showdown against Mississippi State (3-14-0, 0-10-0 SEC) required a much grittier effort. Only one week from a bitter 1-1 draw with Ole Miss, the Gamecocks were determined to fiercely protect any lead they had.
South Carolina claimed that lead in the 70th minute when freshman Sophie Groff beat Mississippi State keeper CJ Winship inside the right post for her second career goal.
“We were pushing really strong not only to make sure they didn’t score but we were trying to score more goals to solidify our lead,” Johnson said. “We didn’t want [what happened against Ole Miss] to happen again.”
The Gamecocks kept the Bulldogs off the board the rest of the way to preserve the 1-0 victory. South Carolina ended the match with a 15-6 shot advantage.
South Carolina closes the regular season on Thursday night at home against conference opponent Kentucky. Johnson believes this weekend was a sign of better things to come.
“I think we definitely have more in us for sure, and hopefully, we can start it up on Thursday.”