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Aggies Claim SEC Tournament Championship
ORANGE BEACH, Alabama –
Liz Keester unleashed a brilliant shot from 25 yards out to beat
Florida keeper Taylor Burke with 6:58 remaining in the second half,
giving the No. 21 Texas A&M Aggies a come-from-behind, 2-1, win
over the No. 5 Gators in the SEC Tournament Championship at Orange
Beach Sportsplex on Sunday afternoon.
It marks the
Aggies first SEC Tournament title and the sixth conference tournament
crown in the history of the program. With the win, Texas A&M
(17-4-1) secured a bid to their 19th consecutive NCAA Division I
Championship.
With the game tied 1-1 and drifting
toward overtime Grace Wright set up the game-winning goal. She
controlled the ball 30 yards out on the left side and glided toward the
center of the pitch. With defenders approaching she dumped a pass off
to Keester on the right flank. Keester took two dribbles to clear a
defender and then boomed a shot from 25 yards out over the top of a
leaping Burke and into the left upper 90 for her third goal of the
tournament and 10th of the season.
The Aggies
knotted the game in the 56th minute. Kelley Monogue slotted a pass
through three Florida defenders, hitting Shea Groom on the run just
outside the penalty box. Groom took two touches and then hit a driven
shot low and to the right of Burke for the equalizer, her 13th goal of
the season.
The Gators drew first blood in the
28th minute. With Savannah Jordan sent a cross from the right outside
the penalty box. Pamela Begic was making a run down the center of the
pitch and tapped the ball to the left to Annie Speese who beat A&M
goalkeeper Jordan Day for her third goal of the season and the 1-0 lead.
Florida
took advantage of a couple fortuitous bounces on the Aggie assault in
the final five minutes of the first half to keep the Maroon and White
off the scoreboard going into the intermission.
On
a free kick from 20 yards out with 4:55 remaining in the first half,
Meghan Streight hit a near perfect free kick off the bottom of the
crossbar. The shot bounced straight down, but failed to cross the line
and Florida goalkeeper Taylor Burke pounced on the ball before Janae
Cousineau could provide a follow-up. With two minutes remaining in the
half Annie Kunz sent a cross in off the endline and Burke made a
lunging dive disrupt the path of the ball, but it bounced multiple
times in front of an empty net before Florida defenders beat the
A&M forwards to the ball.
Texas A&M owned an 8-5 advantage in shots in the first half, but the Gators owned a 3-1 edge in shots-on-goal.
For
the match, A&M owned a 17-14 edge in shots and 5-4 margin in
shots-on-goal. Florida owned a 6-4 advantage in corner kicks and the
Gators brought physical play to the pitch, whistled for 13 fouls to
only four for the Aggies.
Day made three saves in goal to pick up her 49th career win, taking sole possession of third place on A&M’s career win list.
The
12th Man helped bring a record crowd to the Orange Beach Sportsplex for
the SEC Tournament with a record crowd of 1,711 in attendance.
The
Aggies will await the announcement of the NCAA Division I Championship
field on Monday to find out who their next opponent. The selection show
will be aired on NCAA.com at 3:30 pm Central.
2013 SEC Soccer Tournament All-Tournament Team
MVP: Liz Keester, Texas A&M
Mandy McCalla, Ole Miss
Bethany Bunker, Ole Miss
Danielle Au, South Carolina
Sabrina D’Angelo, South Carolina
Savannah Jordan, Florida
Havana Solaun, Florida
Christen Westphal, Florida
Allie Bailey, Texas A&M
Shea Groom, Texas A&M
Liz Keester, Texas A&M
Meghan Streight, Texas A&M
TEXAS A&M QUOTES
Texas A&M Head Coach G Guerrieri
On
Texas A&M winning the program’s first SEC Tournament Championship:
As they say, words can’t describe. It’s a real feeling of pride for
these kids. We got off to a little bit of a slow start in the season.
We lost our first SEC game of the regular season and were able to claw
back and win a share of the regular-season title. This is special
because this is against the champions from last year and the team we
were tied with at the end of the regular season, and a team that we
have the utmost respect for. It was going to take a special effort. We
had two great goals in the second half to, first, claw back in and then
the second one was just a great, great goal by Liz [Keester] to win it.
On
Texas A&M freshman Liz Keester being named the SEC Tournament MVP:
Not bad for a freshman to come in and do that. We joke with her because
her family has been coming here to Orange Beach as long as she can
remember. We consider this her new home field and she sure played like
it, getting two goals in the semifinal against South Carolina and then
one to win the championship for us.
On not getting
discouraged by a 1-0 deficit at halftime: We wanted to make sure that
the players knew that even though we were down at halftime, we had been
playing well. We had gotten a lot of chances, we just didn’t get them
on frame. To not lose their confidence because the game plan was
working. We just had to have the confidence to go out and stick with
it, and the grit to make it happen. That’s what it came down to.
On
preparations for the upcoming NCAA Tournament: I think the SEC is in
really good shape for the NCAA Tournament. We’re hoping that we can get
six, seven, maybe eight teams into the field. For us, this is a chance
for us maybe to be a seeded team. Florida should be a seeded team,
South Carolina should be a seeded team. This helps us out a lot and
we’re excited about the announcement on Monday and then, obviously, I
think it’s a pretty good bet that we’re going to play at home for our
19th straight NCAA Tournament, which is really special.
Associate Head Coach Phil Stephenson
On
the difference in the first half: We talked about the difference at
half time as ‘they stuck their chance and we did not stick ours.’
Because they only had one chance to score, and they did. We had two or
three and did not. At halftime we talked about how we were playing
great, but it’s going to take a little bit of courage at one end of the
field. Defensively we were fantastic, but we needed courage in their
18-yard box and the six-yard box.
On Shea Groom’s
goal: One of the things we did with Shea was to move her around. She is
such a great player and we needed to get her the ball. She played four
different positions today in search of the ball. We kept moving her. It
was too crowded in the middle, so we moved Allie (Bailey) there and put
Shea out wide. The we couldn’t get her the ball out wide when we needed
to, so we moved her up front to start the second half and she was
getting more of the ball up front.
On Liz
Keester’s goal: The two goals she scored the other day (semifinal vs
South Carolina) we her two closest all season. The rest of the year she
has scored goals like that (from range), so that’s just a
run-of-the-mill goal for her.
Freshman forward Liz Keester, Texas A&M
On
Texas A&M winning its first SEC Soccer Tournament Title: It was
really exciting. I think it was a really great team effort out there.
Our defense was solid, our midfield was solid and it was definitely a
full team effort to get the win.
On being named SEC Tournament
MVP: It means a lot – it’s really exciting. I wouldn’t be anywhere
without my teammates. They make the passes. They’re right there
carrying me across the line when we’re running. We’re all in it
together.
On coming up clutch in each of the last
two matches for Texas A&M: As funny as it seems, it just goes back
to being a soccer game and doing what you love. In the moment, you just
play and live in the moment.
Junior midfielder/forward Shea Groom
On
winning the championship: It’s a great feeling. Being co-champions in
the regular season when we had a chance to win it outright wasn’t what
we wanted. We felt like this would be a tie-breaker of we won it. We
don’t have to share this with anyone.
On her goal:
It goes back to my teammates. They did great work to get possession of
the ball and Kelley (Monogue) has been playing great balls on the
attack all conference play and in the tournament.
Junior defender Meghan Streight
On
winning the championship: I’m too excited for this. This is what we
worked for all year and to have this reward is awesome and we’re so
pumped for what’s next (NCAA Tournament).
On the
team’s defense: We changed our defense because we know how they play.
They’re a very possession-based team, so we changed how we played to
counter that. It worked well. We were able to shut down their best
player, Savannah Jordan and keep her from taking quality shots.
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