Junior forward Lauren Sullivan scored 10 goals in her first two seasons with the Bluejays, but she entered Friday night’s match against Northern Colorado with only two goals scored on 28 shots so far this season. Against the Bears on Friday, she needed only five shots to match the total.
The prolific attacker from Kansas City, Missouri, put a ball in the back of the net in the 55th minute and again in the 69th minute to lead Creighton (6-3-0) to a 3-0 win. The goals were a welcome sight to Bluejay head coach Ross Paule after watching his star forward struggle to put shots away in recent weeks.
“For ‘Sully’ to get rewarded with goals finally is huge. She’s had lots of opportunities, and hopefully this is a breakout game for her,” Paule said. “It’s key for us to have our main forwards up there getting goals, and she is one of the ones that can score a lot of goals when she’s on. The great thing the whole season has been that she’s been getting the chances. We keep telling her they’re going to start going in, and she’s got a great mentality to where she’s pushing through it. She got rewarded with it tonight.”
Sullivan’s third career multi-goal match as a Creighton Bluejay pushed her up to 14 goals scored in her nearly two and a half seasons at the collegiate level, making her Creighton’s active leader in the category. But even for someone who has produced as much as Sullivan, confidence can start to fade when a scoring drought hits.
“We were talking this past weekend that I had eight shots and only two on goal [against Montana]. It’s good that we’re getting opportunities, but at the same time, if they’re not hitting the back of the net it’s wasted,” Sullivan said. “I knew coming in today that I really needed to take this performance, and our next couple games, to really push ahead into conference and sort of hit my stride when it really counts.”
When it really counts is now a little more than a week away when Creighton begins Big East play against Marquette on the road. To the satisfaction of their head coach, the Bluejays are starting to raise their level of play just in time.
“I think our fitness is getting a whole lot better. I think we’re playing with the effort that it takes to dominate games, and to play against good teams,” Paule said. “This team that we just played has gotten good results this year and we knew that. We have the mentality that we’re not going to give away any easy chances, and we’re going to make teams earn any goals against us. On the attacking side I think our runs are getting a whole lot better. We’re working together off of each other, and looking to find each other.”
Creighton dominated Northern Colorado from the opening kickoff, outshooting the Bears (5-4-0) by a margin of 24-7, including a 16-3 edge in the second half. Despite that effort, the Bluejays didn’t have any goals to show for it, but came out of the locker room determined to make the scoreboard reflect the play on the field.
“That’s the best game we’ve played,” Sullivan said. “Great first half, some of our goals didn’t fall obviously, but I feel like so far this season we’ve been a second-half team, so going into the locker room we knew we were going to go out and take it to them.”
The result was three goals in the final 35 minutes and 52 seconds of the match. The final goal was put in by sophomore midfielder Summer Khalil. The Omaha Westside product has battled some nagging lower leg injuries through the early part of the season, but she made her only shot count late in the match when she controlled a corner kick entered by senior right back Jill Richgels and put it in the back of the net. It was only the second goal of her career, and first in well over a year, but Khalil didn’t speed herself up too much and capitalized on the opportunity.
“We’ve been focusing a lot on near post runs, because those are really hard for the goalkeeper to stop,” she said. “I saw Jill’s ball curving towards me, then I saw the defender running in front of me and knew I needed to beat her there. I got in front of her and settled the ball down. I just tried to keep it low and drill it in.”
Khalil’s goal was the icing on the cake as the Bluejays finished off their second win over the last three games, a stretch where they have scored six goals and raised their level of play over the course of the 270 minutes. According to the sophomore, it all starts with defense.
“The coaches have been really good on telling us where we need to move, and where we need to check to, what kind of shape we need to have, and I think that helps out a lot,” Khalil said. “Our defensive shape corresponds with the way we need to attack as well, as a unit. Tonight we passed and moved really, and just got up the field. We were calm and didn’t try to force it anywhere, and kept the ball on the ground most of the time.”
Creighton will do some training and recovery on Saturday before returning to the pitch on Sunday at 12:00 p.m. to take on the Colorado State Rams (3-4-1) at Morrison Stadium. The Rams defeated Northern Colorado earlier this season, 3-1, and will be facing the Bluejays two days after defeating Nebraska-Omaha, 1-0, in double overtime.
“It’s be another tough game,” Ross Paule said. “Sunday games are not easy. Both teams play on Friday and you’ve only got a day to recover, so we’ve got to come with the mentality that we are going to bring the same effort that we did tonight.”