UNC Women’s soccer loses a close one to #2 Notre Dame

When I last took a look at the UNC women’s soccer team, they had entered ACC play with the hopes that a win against Virginia Tech would help them solidify things ahead of games against Florida State and Notre Dame, two of the best teams in the country. Unfortunately, that was only kind of the case, as the Heels lost both games by one goal: a 1-0 loss to Florida State at home and a 4-3 loss Wednesday night to Notre Dame in South Bend. The #22 Heels now sit at 7-4-0 and 1-2-0 in a stacked ACC.

In a vacuum, one-goal losses to two top-5 teams nationally are nothing to be ashamed of. And indeed, the Heels played pretty well in both losses. Both games were lost not by being the clearly worse team on the field, but by a couple of individual defensive lapses caused by inexperience on the back line and at goalkeeper. A theme you’ll keep seeing as you read about and watch this team is how young this team is — despite being led by senior stars in Olivia Thomas and Kate Faasse, they’re relying on a lot of underclassmen to make major contributions: Of the six players who have started every game, all but Thomas and Faasse are either first-years or sophomores, and that’s still true of the three other players who have played in at least 10 of UNC’s 11 games. As I mentioned in last week’s recap, sophomores Bella Devey and Aven Alvarez on the back line were really good last year, but they’ve had rocky second years as they adjust to new roles on the line and not having last year’s wunderkind Trinity Armstrong to cover for them, and their inexperience is showing a fair bit.

Against Florida State, the defense overall tightened up outside of giving Jordynn Dudley a little too much space in the box, which she took advantage of with a header into the net. They only allowed five other shots on goal, which Abby Gundry handled ably. Issues came on the other end of the pitch, where UNC was able to create plenty of attacking zone time but never really found space or angles to fire shots off. FSU’s depth and athleticism made it hard for Tar Heel attackers to stop them from being in between the ball and the goalmouth, and the Heels only fired three shots on goal all game — none of them really forcing anything other than routine efforts.

As you can tell from the score, the script against Notre Dame was a different story. The Heels started off strong, sending a bunch of balls into the attacking third, but a cheap giveaway in the back off a Notre Dame clearance gave them an easy scoring opportunity that they converted against the run of play in the 8th minute. That seemed to sap the energy out of the Heels, and the Irish dominated most of the rest of the first half, which culminated in a goal scored on one of their seven corner kicks of the half. UNC was able to fight back, though, and in the 38th minute, earned their first corner kick. First-year attacking midfielder Lauren Malsom headed home the ball sent in by Linda Ullmark to give her team some life headed into the break.

Again, coming out of the half, UNC looked like the superior team, but again, a lapse on defense gave Notre Dame the first goal. This one was caused by the first real mistake I’ve seen Gundry make as a keeper, giving too soft a challenge on the Irish’s forward on a 50/50 ball that allowed the forward to stay upright, recollect the ball, and fire it into an empty net. It was a ball that Gundry could have squeezed and protected, but if she didn’t feel able to do that, she could have at least punched it away. A 3-1 hole with 35 minutes to go, on the road, against the #2 team in the country, is pretty daunting, but the Heels showed some fight even still. Off of another corner kick, Malsom got a ball off a failed clear and fired a rocket into the nearside top corner to give her a brace and her team some momentum with just a one-goal deficit.

The game got pretty loose from there, with both teams conceding a lot of attacking runs, and Notre Dame got to cap one off before UNC did, with a pinpoint cross that found a forward inside the 6-yard box for a header that she couldn’t have missed if she’d tried. Gaetino could maybe have been on her a little more closely, but it’s hard to really fault her. That late, a two-goal deficit probably was too much to overcome, but the Heels made things interesting with several near misses over the next ~12 minutes before Olivia Thomas fired a nuke from outside the 18, beating the keeper on her near side and scoring her ACC-leading 9th goal of the season with 5 minutes left to play. It was too little, too late, and the Fighting Irish held on for the win.

The ACC is a stacked conference — you can’t even really pick out three teams that would be good to start conference play with. That said, FSU and Notre Dame are probably two of the teams you’d least like to see, and playing them largely evenly is a positive sign. Like I said at the top, though, that positive sign has to turn to results quickly, or else the Heels will find themselves in a hole in the conference that’s too deep to get out of and that will disadvantage them come postseason time. They’ll have an opportunity to put another mark in the win column next Thursday at home against Boston College, who are a good team but are one of the relatively few ACC squads that aren’t among the country’s elite.