If the purpose of exhibition games is to get some honest input on where your team stands before regular season begins, the Idaho State women’s soccer team got some pretty blunt feedback from a very good Utah Valley team in its exhibition game Saturday night.
The Wolverines, the defending Western Athletic Conference champions who shut out perennial power BYU in an earlier exhibition contest, dominated the Bengals 7-2 in Orem. Utah Valley got a hat trick (three goals) from All-WAC forward Faith Webber, and outshot ISU 34-10.
The Bengals, who trailed 4-0 at half, got goals from redshirt freshman Samantha Esparza and junior Mary Za to cut the lead to 5-2. But Webber scored the last of her three goals and the Wolverines added another in the final three minutes to put the game away.
“It was a great exhibition for our team,” said ISU head soccer coach Dustin Downey. “I love playing quality opponents in preseason to see where our strengths lie, what weaknesses we need to improve upon and to continue to identify our top performers.”
Utah Valley certainly qualifies as a “quality opponent.” In winning the WAC last season, the Wolverines finished 7-0-2 in conference, and 10-4-5 overall. They won ten straight spring exhibition matches before downing their Provo neighbor and rival BYU recently.
“As a coach, it’s important to put things in perspective,” said Downey, whose team is coming off a sixth place finish in the Big Sky Conference and its first postseason tournament appearance since 2014. “Not only for myself, but the staff and the players.
“We had some quality attacking moments,” Downey continued, “and some good defensive moments. Ultimately, we probably should have converted another three to four good chances to score, but we didn’t capitalize.”
Downey said that as long as his team is generating scoring opportunities, he’s not too concerned about how many goals they score.
“We’re consistently creating chances in front of the goal, and we want to keep that going,” he said. “Defensively is where we need the most work, and we’re going to get started on that. ... spending the next couple of days ironing out the defensive tactics and details in preparation for our upcoming regular season matches in Colorado against Colorado State and Denver.”
The Bengals kick off their regular season Thursday at noon against the Mountain West’s Colorado State in Fort Collins. The Bengals lost to the Rams, 2-1, last season. Then they travel to the University of Denver for a match on Sunday at 1 p.m. They didn’t play Denver last year.
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