Behind strong performances from junior left back Jaylin Bosak and redshirt freshman goalkeeper Katie Sullivan, the Creighton women’s soccer team withstood a pressure-packed first half attack from Iowa. However, it was short lived as they conceded two goals in the first 10 minutes after the break to drop a 2-0 result in their 2018 season-opener in Iowa City.
The Bluejays played even with the Hawkeyes in the first 45 minutes at the Iowa Soccer Complex. At the break, Iowa held a 7-6 lead in total shots while Creighton had a 3-1 edge in shots on goal, but neither team was able to break through on the scoreboard until Natalie Winters — a U-18 and U-20 U.S. National Team alum — put the Hawkeyes ahead 1-0 on a penalty kick in the 47th minute. Not long after, it was Riley Whitaker firing a shot that deflected into the net off of a Creighton defender to double up the lead in the 56th minute.
“Coming out in the second half, we didn’t start slow, it was more a matter of miscommunication,” Creighton head coach Ross Paule said. “They are a more direct team and we did not step up into the space, they got in behind, and it created the chaos for the penalty kick and it was the same thing [for the second goal].
“Our whole team did a solid job over the 90 minutes to limit their chances, but we have to get better at being consistent to not give away those one or two deadly chances. That’s kind of what happened to us today.”
The Bluejays stayed on the attack in search of the comeback, but they never could get that zero off the board mainly due to their inability to find their two top attackers in junior Taryn Jakubowski and Pitt transfer Juelle Love. Paule attributed their struggles to a equal parts Iowa’s defense and Creighton’s inability to put them in position to make something happen.
“There are two parts to it,” he said. “I think Iowa closed them down a little bit quicker today, but I also think we could have done a better job of getting them the ball in the pockets to be able to give them the chances to go one on one.
“When you have dangerous, creative, attacking players like those two they are going to go through games like this where it looks they are being limited, but I still have confidence that if we play this game again I feel that they could break free one or two times … they’re not going to have success every game, but I do know that we can do a better job of getting them the ball in wider positions one on one and finding them in the little pockets in behind the defense.”
The two bright spots in the losing effort were Bosak and Sullivan.
Bosak, a junior from Omaha, shut down anything that came her way whether it was in the form a through ball or a 1v1. Hardly any of Iowa’s shots on the afternoon came from her side of the field.
“She was one of our best players,” Paule said. “She’s very hard to beat one on one, and I don’t remember a time where she got beat in behind. I thought she also did a good job with the ball. A key for us is what do we do with the ball when we win it and to me ‘Jaybo’ is a leader for this group defensively. She’s been very consistent so far in preseason, and today she had another good performance. She’s just going to get better and better at that spot.”
Sullivan, who is a redshirt freshman from Wheaton, Illinois, finished with two saves in her first career start. Her most notable moment came midway through the first half when she made a diving save right at the end line to keep Iowa off the board on a redirect after a shot off the post. Officials halted the action to review the play before eventually confirming that Sullivan had indeed stopped the shot in time.
“There was nothing she could do about either one of those goals,” Paule said in his evaluation of his new goalkeeper’s first official collegiate match. “She made big saves when she was called upon, and the other thing she did very well was her distribution of the ball. I didn’t think she made many mistakes the choices she made when she played the ball out of the back. It was just another solid performance. You can’t fault anything that she did in this game. She communicated well, took command of the box, and I think that had a lot to do with limiting the chances that produced against us.”
Creighton, now 0-1-0 on the season, will travel back to Omaha for a week of training before heading back out on the road for a match against Air Force on Friday, August 24th at 7:00 p.m.
