VILLANOVA, Pa. – Villanova faced an offensive onslaught from No. 21 Xavier on Sunday, falling 3-0 at Higgins Soccer Complex.
This marks the first BIG EAST loss of the season for Villanova (4-5-2, 1-1-1) and ends a two-game streak of clean sheets for the group. The 'Cats found themselves facing the third-most shots by an opponent this season with Xavier (9-1-2, 2-0-1) outshooting them 24-9, 12-3 for shots on frame.
"Today was not our day," Villanova head coach
Samar Azem said. "We pride ourselves on how we defend, and we played one of the best teams in the nation offensively and we let them have the front foot. That started with me, you know, with our preparation, with our game plan. There's a lot of lessons there for all of us on how we play these types of games with that much pressure, where they take space away, where they have numbers running in and just the system that they play. That's an exceptionally talent Xavier team. They've been a very successful program for a long time and they showed us that."
Xavier got on the board early with an oppo-rocket from Regan Dancer in the third minute. She played a ball to Samantha Erbach near the 18-yard box before Erbach evaded defenders to send a pass back to Dancer who had made her way to the right side of the box. She sent a rocket from the line that sailed into the back left corner of the net for a 1-0 lead.
Villanova locked down on defense in the rest of the first half to keep the next 13 shot attempts out of the net, seven of them being saved by
Hannah Dickinson. The Wildcats had just two shots on goal in the opening 45. The best chance came off of a corner in the 24
th minute.
Susanna Soderman's in-swinger hit off the head of
Lauren Ashman before
Elon Rutty took a header of her own that was saved by Xavier's Maria Galley.
After spending most of the first half on the defensive side of the pitch, offensive momentum swung in favor of the Blue and White early in the second half.
Madison Shumate had a strong chance at the net in the 51
st minute. She sent a screamer in from the top left corner of the box that forced Galley to go airborne for the save. The freshman had another chance in the 60
th but her shot went high.
Xavier doubled its lead in the 71
st minute with a goal from Samantha Wiehe. Toni Fiocco-Mizer passed through a busy lane near the top of the box to find Wiehe, scoring from 12 yards out to make it a 2-0 Musketeer lead.
A penalty in the box in the 79
th minute gave Xavier its final goal of the day. Wiehe lined up for the shot and sent it toward the middle of the net past Dickinson for a 3-0 tally.
Shumate led the 'Cats with four shots on the day while Wiehe led all players on the pitch with five. Dickinson was called upon for nine saves, her second most of the season. Galley made two on the other end of the field.
Villanova stays at home this week as it hosts DePaul on Thursday. Kickoff is set for 4 p.m.
