The final day of the regular season often finds teams trying to navigate murky waters. Their postseason fate is sometimes completely out of their control. That was not case for the Creighton women’s soccer team on Saturday afternoon. In their regular season finale at Morrison Stadium, the Bluejays had their destiny in their own hands — beat St. John’s and clinch a spot the fourth and final spot in the Big East Tournament; lose or draw, and scoreboard watch the results of the Providence-DePaul and Butler-Villanova matches.
Jimmy Walker’s club cancelled the watch party and instead decided to make sure their position in the postseason came on their own terms. The Bluejays built a 2-0 lead in the first half, then put the icing on the cake with another goal early in the second half to cap off a 3-0 win over the Red Storm.
“I’m really pleased, not just with today’s game, but with the last three weeks,” Walker said. “I think we’ve started to come together as a team. I don’t think we’re fully there yet. I still think we’ve got more in us, but it’s been a really good last three weeks the way we’ve grinded and gotten through games and the way we’ve been resilient.”
The first 30 minutes of the first half was a story of missed opportunities. The last 15 was about finishing the chances they had earned from the opening touch. Sophomore forward Anna Bragg and freshman forward Jalen Chaney scored a pair of clean header goals to give Creighton a 2-0 lead over St. John’s at the break.
The Bluejays created chances early. They owned the ball and built up through the midfield, but they could not get a clean, clinical touch in the final third. That changed when they won a hard-earned corner kick right at the touch line. Freshman defender Olivia Sides took it from there with a pinpoint cross to the near post where Bragg soared in over everybody else on the pitch to head it home with 14:11 remaining in the first half.
“[Bragg] usually runs back post, so I did not see her,” Sides said. “She just got there. It was a beautiful run by her. I just tried to in-swing it a bit towards the goalkeeper. That’s what we’ve been talking about in practice. I just worked on that, and went front post, and Bragg made a beautiful front post run.”
Creighton doubled up the lead just under six minutes later when sophomore forward Kendal Radke played a ball across the box. Chaney was waiting for it on the back post to get the unimpeded finish with 8:17 left to play before halftime.
“Kendal put the ball in the air just how I like it,” Chaney said. “We do those all the time at practice. We try to just get it up in the air, because I can probably jump over the defender, but I say no one was running next to me — I just tried to head it to the ground because it’s harder for the keeper to get down. I just wanted to get it on frame, get it on the ground, and hopefully it goes in.”
The Bluejays extinguished any thought of a fiery finish by St. John’s when Brynn Gardner slotted home a picturesque goal in transition to extend the lead to 3-0 with 32:58 remaining in the match.
Creighton clinched the No. 4 seed in the Big East Tournament with the win, improving their overall regular season record to 7-7-4, and 4-3-3 in conference play, in the process. The nine wins against Big East competition over the last two seasons since Walker took over the program are the most in a two-year span for any women’s soccer head coach since the Jays moved to the Big East back in 2013.
The Big East Tournament gets underway at the Maryland Soccerplex in Boyds, Md. on Thursday, November 6. Creighton will face off against either Georgetown or Xavier in the semifinals depending on the result of that matchup.