MALIBU, California – The #8 Pepperdine women's soccer team tripled up Long Beach State in shots but the Beach left Tari Frahm Rokus Field with a 2-1 win on Thursday afternoon in the Waves' home opener.
Despite an 18-6 shot advantage, the Waves (2-1-0) fell behind early to the Beach (2-0-0), but answered back with a Joelle Anderson goal. The Waves put pressure on Beach throughout the rest of the match and nearly equaled the score, but in the late second half the Waves hit the post once and had another goal called back due to offside.
GOALS
LBSU 7': Beach's first shot of the game resulted in the first goal. Kayla Cannon brought the ball down the right side of the field with a rocketed pass across the box, while Summer Laskey made her way through a Pepperdine defender and knocked it into the back left corner of the net for her first collegiate goal.Â
LBSU 9': The Waves' pass was kicked too far as they tried to go back into their own zone, but Beach's Lena Silano buried the second goal on a breakaway.Â
Pepperdine 11': Sophomore midfielder Julianna Duckett (Rancho Cucamonga, Calif./Rancho Cucamonga HS) soared a pass from the right side of the field to redshirt senior forward Joelle Anderson (San Jose, Calif./ Harker School) who came crashing into the box and with a left foot poke. Anderson put the Waves within one for her first goal of the season.Â
STATS
Shots: Pepperdine 18, LBSU 6
Shots on goal: Pepperdine 9, LBSU 3
Saves: Zoe Clevely (Pepperdine) 1, Morgan Houston-Shepherd (LBSU) 7
Corner Kicks: Pepperdine 6, LBSU 1
Fouls: Pepperdine 9, LBSU 9
Offside: Pepperdine 5, LBSU 2
QUOTABLEÂ
Pepperdine Coach Tim Ward said: "Other than the first 10 minutes, I thought we did okay. That was a really poor start. It was similar to the USC game, except we didn't get punished. Credit to Beach, I think they were really well-prepared for us. They did some things early on in terms of their press that I thought were really good. The goals from our perspective are really poor goals to give away. On the flip side, we had a good response to going down 2-0 to make it 2-1. I think we forget that before there was even a score in the game, Leyla had a chance to make it 1-0 (Pepperdine). At 2-1, I thought we had plenty of time. This team has plenty of goals in it. We had 18 shots today, and six to eight of those I'd like to think were pretty good looks. To only get one goal out of that is pretty disappointing. It's a young season. Not the result we wanted but from a performance standpoint we also stuck with what we're trying to get better at  – and we did get better at it. Our second half performance was really good – we just needed a goal. We thought we had one but it was called back offsides; Devyn also hit the post and we thought that was in. It's just a bit unfortunate. Credit to Beach - they're good friends, good coaches, they did a nice job and it's a good result for them. It was a good learning experience for us."
NEXT
Pepperdine visits UC Riverside on Sunday (August 29) at 7:30 p.m.
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