Soccer seeks strong finish

 
The Southern Lady Jaguar Soccer team seeks to finish strong as they travel to face Prairie View 4 p.m. Friday.
After suffering a close 2-3 home loss against Alabama State, the Lady Jaguars aim to put pressure on the Lady Panthers.
The Lady Jaguars (0-10-1, 0-2-1 Southwestern Athletic Conference) are currently fourth in the SWAC Western Division.
In Southern’s home finale against Alabama State, (6-7-2, 1-1 SWAC) SU scored a season high four goals in a game, the only problem was two of them were for the Lady Hornets.
“That’s what makes soccer what we call the beautiful game,” Courtney Prather, assistant head coach said. “Because it can be very beautiful when it works in your favor and it’s beautiful for the other team when it works in their fashion.”
In Sunday’s game the Lady Jaguars were up 2-1 at halftime but allowed Alabama State to score their first goal three minutes before halftime in the 42^nd minute of the first half.
“We are still having a big problem in finishing halves and finishing games,” Prather said.
The Lady Jaguars have allowed their last two opponents to score in the last minutes of games.
In their game against Alabama A&M the game was tied zero all, until the Lady Bulldogs scored their first goal in the 78^th minute of the game and within 12 minutes scored two additional goals to hand SU a 0-3 loss.
“Its our job as a coaching staff to keep working with the girls on how to close out those games,” Prather said. “We definitely have to put them in a lot more pressure situations in practice and try to get that killer mentality and put teams away.”
The Lady Jaguars’ final two games of the season are on the road in Texas against Prairie View A&M and their season finale against Texas Southern.
For Southern these last two games will ultimately determine if they will play in November for the SWAC soccer championship.
“Our playoffs start this weekend if we don’t take care of business this weekend we are not getting into the tournament so its very important that we look at it as a win or go home situation,” Prather said.
Their next opponent PVAMU (6-10, 2-1) is currently first in the SWAC Western Division two games ahead of the Lady Jags.
Prather believes that her team is starting to incorporate all the things that they have been working on all season to get sharper.
“We still feel like that no matter what’s been happening with the outcome in terms of wins and losses and ties we think we can still be the team that surprises everybody,” Prather said.
It also helps to have experienced players coming back from injury like junior forward Teara Richardson and sophomore defender Courtney Bahadursingh.
“Teara came back from injury she did exactly what we asked her to do she was man marking a player that was giving us a lot of trouble,” Prather said.
The Lady Jaguars will need all the experience and healthy bodies possible for Friday’s contest against the Lady Panthers who lead the SWAC in goals scored averaging 1.56 goals per game.
That may seem bad statistically for Southern but Alabama State leads the SWAC in shutouts and the Lady Jags were able to put up two goals against the Lady Hornets in the first half.