After a thrilling 3-2 victory over Northern Colorado, the Vandals improved to 2-0 in Big Sky play as they defeated North Dakota 1-0 on Sunday.
The win improves the Vandals to 2-9 overall and drops North Dakota to 1-6-1 on the season.
Sophomore forward Kavita Battan put the Vandals on the board in the 20th minute, it proved to be just enough as sophomore goal keeper Torrell Stewart and the Vandals recorded their first shutout of the season.
Both Stewart and UND goal keeper Kristi Hestdalen recorded a number of athletic saves on the day, Cooper was also aided by a few off target shots by the Vandals. In total Idaho outshot its opponent for the second consecutive game 19-8.
Hestdalen however recorded six saves to Stewart’s three.
The game was extremely physical. This came to a head in the 65th minute when Idaho’s Elexis Schlossarek and UND’s Marissa Ricci were issued dueling yellow cards after a corner kick.
The Vandals will look to extend their winning streak to three on Friday when they travel to Cedar City, Utah to take on Southern Utah.
Spencer
One note on saves for the writer: One keeper having more saves than the other is actually not a good thing, generally speaking, and usually isn't a great tool for head-to-head comparison between keepers. Idaho's keeper "only" had three saves in a shutout, which means the Idaho defense only allowed three on-target shots and she was only forced to make three true stops. The opposing keeper having more saves than Torell Stewart isn't really a negative reflection on Torell, it's a positive on our defense (and on our offense for putting more pressure on their team than they put on us). A better indicator of goalkeeper performance is save percentage - Stewart saved all three of her chances, while the UND keeper saved six of her eight chances.