The No. 16 NC State women’s soccer team suffered a 2-0 defeat at the hands of Wake Forest in its first ACC matchup of the season Thursday night at Dail Soccer Stadium.
The Wolfpack (7-2-1) was back in action Thursday after a week off. On a beautiful night for soccer, NC State was unable to hold off the Demon Deacons (5-2-1), who used an early goal to take the momentum and play defensively for the rest of the match.
“The first goal in an ACC game is important,” head coach Tim Santoro said. “You can’t go down 1-0 in the first 10-15 minutes.”
That first goal came just nine minutes into the match. The Wolfpack defense faltered and allowed a pass across the box, which Wake Forest’s Hannah Betfort toed in. The goal was her first of the season and was only the fourth match of the season that the Wolfpack conceded a goal first.
The Wolfpack almost came right back with a goal of its own, but a corner into the box was headed just wide.
The first half was ripe with opportunity for both teams, but solid defensive play and goalkeeping saw it end with Wake having the only goal.
With the Wake Forest defense holding back, the Pack looked to take advantage of counterattack opportunities in the second half.
“The second half we had to push the game was going to open up and go end to end which we didn’t want it to do,” Santoro said. “But we had to, being down a goal. We had to take a couple of chances, altered things to try to get more numbers forward, but with that it gave them a lot of opportunities to counter and it all comes down to giving up the first goal too early.”
Giving Wake Forest these opportunities turned out to be the beginning of the end for the Pack. Wake saw ample opportunities in the second half, outshooting the Wolfpack 11-7 during that time.
“They did a really good job of shutting down our attacks in and around the 18 (yard box),” senior defender Hannah Keogh said. “And they did a good job getting the ball from us and transitioning quickly to put us on defense.”
The shots mainly came from corner kicks as the Demon Deacons had eight corners for the game, including five in the second half.
”Eight corners is too many.” Santoro said. “We defended the first seven well, but again we shouldn’t have to defend seven or eight.”
The second Wake Forest goal came off of that eighth corner kick, which was actually the second of back-to-back corners. The ball was placed at the far post and in the chaos of everything in front of the goalie, the ball managed to find its way to the right foot of Bayley Feist, who put it in to double to Demon Deacons lead.
“That’s something we’ve actually struggled with this season, defending corner kicks,” Keogh said.
That goal was scored in the 74th minute, giving the Wolfpack only 16 minutes to try and mount a comeback. The Pack had some good chances at the end with shots from juniors Tziarra King and Ricci Walkling, but both were unable to find the back of the net.
After winning six of the first seven matches of the season, the Wolfpack has lost two of the last three and doesn’t look like the top-10 team that it knows it can be.
“We’re 7-2-1 against a tough schedule,” Santoro said. “We’ll be fine, we’ll rebound and be ready for Sunday.”
The Wolfpack will be back in action against a struggling Pittsburgh team who has lost four of the last five games it’s played. The game will be in Raleigh at the Dail Soccer Stadium Sunday at 1 p.m.
“Our goal is to score early and score often against Pitt to get that momentum.” Keogh said.
