With one weekend down, Idaho soccer split its first two games.
After losing to Boise State on Friday, a quick road trip to Bakersfield ended with the Vandals picking up a 1-0 victory over the CSU Bakersfield Roadrunners.
Sophomore midfielder Maddie Haas scored the lone goal in the match, the first of her career, off of a junior Malia Morales throw-in from deep in the corner and assisted by junior forward Brooke Sosa.
“I was very happy with our performance tonight, especially coming off a hard-fought game on Friday,” said Idaho Head Coach Jeremy Clevenger after the game. “This was a good team win against a good opponent. Two things stood out to me, we had different people step up tonight and I am always happy when we can get a shutout.”
Berglind Baldursdóttir and Maddie Haas Idaho Athletics
This was the first-ever win at CSU Bakersfield for the Vandals, having lost the last three road matchups.
When taking a look at the stats from this last weekend and comparing the two games, there is not a huge difference in the two performances.
The only major difference is the number of corner kicks that Idaho had, which can certainly be correlated with an increase in offensive efficiency and creativity. The Vandals worked the ball in the offensive third and allowed the Roadrunners’ defense to force corner kicks, something Idaho struggled with against the Broncos on Sunday.
But when looking at the Big Sky conference stats, Idaho is still struggling to get shots off compared to its conference opponents. The Vandals rank fifth for shots and are tied for fourth in goals, 14 shots behind Northern Arizona, who is leading the conference in shots so far this season.
It is still early in the season though, with Clevenger saying on multiple occasions that this first part of the year is still a learning period for not just the players, but the coaching staff as well.
The name of the game during the first part of the season is finding the right formula of players and game plan to start picking up wins when conference play rolls around, another thing Clevenger has strongly emphasized over the last couple weeks.
The Vandals will now return to Moscow and start a four-game homestand starting on Friday.
Idaho will host Oregon Tech 5 p.m. Friday in the Kibbie Dome.
Zack Kellogg can be reached at arg-sports@uidaho.edu or on Twitter @kellogg_zack.