Virginia Women’s Soccer Annihilated at Florida State 4-0

Virginia eked out a 4-0 loss against FSU. It could have been much worse.

Virginia Athletics

Virginia men’s basketball head coach Tony Bennett sent shock waves throughout the Virginia sports community earlier in the day by announcing his immediate retirement.  Bennett is the face of Virginia’s athletic department, and if he is not the greatest coach, of any sport, in Virginia history, he certainly brought home Virginia’s greatest national title.  Fans have been comatose all day.

On this night, the women’s soccer team played like they were in the same stupor.  FSU came out firing on all cylinders and overwhelmed Virginia from the opening kickoff.  It took the Seminoles just 75 seconds to record the game’s first shot, a lovely out-swinging shot from Sophia Nguyen that was less than a foot from scoring.  Virginia has been poor all season playing out of the back and in the face of the Florida State onslaught press, they were particularly anemic.  It took a full seven minutes before Virginia had a possession where they strung together more than three passes.  I had planned on making a video of Virginia’s travails, but honestly, it’s just too depressing.  This was women versus girls all game long.

Twenty-one minutes in, Florida State won a corner.  The tallying of corners is a relatively useless statistic – no one tries to get corners – but they are a useful proxy for showing what team is attacking, and which one is not.  This was FSU’s fourth corner (to UVa’s none) and it lead to Taylor Huff heading home for the first goal.  Two Virginia defenders actually backed away from her when the ball was aloft; it was a pretty easy goal.

Three minutes later, Virginia keeper Viki Safradin made a nice point blank save, but the sad fact is that it had only taken FSU three minutes to be in that position.

A minute later, after Virginia had coughed up the ball deep in their front third, Safradin clipped Solai Washington in the penalty box. It was a light foul – the ref actually waited to see if Washington was going to be able take the advantage – and could easily have not been called, but after VAR review, the ref pointed to the penalty spot.  Washington took it and Safradin made the right read and went to her right.  She got her hand on the ball, and it really should have been saved, but it was that kind of night for the Cavaliers.

Florida State got their third goal in 16 minutes when on a cross, Safradin came off her line, and breaking the cardinal of keeping, did not get the ball.  With Safradin off her line and two Virginia defenders doing her no favors, Wrianna Hudson volleyed from three feet out to increase the score to 3-0.  Forty seconds later, shambolic defending put Hudson in position to score a second but somehow she whiffed on the ball.  Two subsequent shots were blocked before a Nole blasted the ball too high.  The game announcer said it best: “Goals are there for the taking.”

Because this is a Steve Swanson team and these women never give up, the women came out of halftime staring a 3-0 deficit in the face, and made it something of a game for the first 25 minutes of the second half.  There’s just too much talent on this Cavaliers team, but it is also true that it is human nature for Florida State to come out and take their foot of the pedal.  If Swanson’s halftime speech was fire and brimstone, FSU’s Brian Pensky’s talk was cautionary.  Last week Florida State had a two-goal lead against Virginia Tech going into the 80th minutes and they surrendered three goals (plus one called back for offside) in the final 10 minutes.  FSU wanted to bleed the game dry and prove that they could close out a win late.

Yuna McCormack, who has played inspired ball since returning from the U20 Women’s World Cup, even had a really nice shot from the top of the penalty box.  But after 25 minutes or so, FSU got bored playing off the back foot, ramped it back up, and got the fourth goal.  Swanson waved the white flag at the 80’ mark, subbing out McCormack and Lia Godfrey.

This team is broke.  Wins against NC State and SMU last week should not obscure the structural problems of this team.  Florida State’s margin of victory in this game matched their season high…  of a 5-1 victory over Syracuse. Let that sink in for a second.  Virginia played the defending national champions about as hard as did perennial ACC bottom-feeder Syracuse. 

There’s a chance that Alexis Theoret may return this season, and the schedule is favorable in that regard.  Virginia has a week off before their next game – Friday, October 25th when they host Clemson – and then another week before the season ender in Blacksburg on Thursday, Halloween night.  Her return may be the only thing that can save this season.