By Dionte Daniel, staff writer\u00a0<\/p>\n
VALDOSTA, Ga. \u2014 VSU women\u2019s soccer suffered a late-goal setback against Jacksonville University Saturday afternoon in a spring exhibition game on the VSU Soccer Fieldhouse turf.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u00a0The scoreless deadlock was broken with just over five minutes left in regulation, as Jacksonville put the game away.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u00a0Despite falling to the Dolphins, the Blazers stayed composed against the Division I program and were able to compete with Jacksonville for most of the game.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u00a0\u201cI thought it was a good game,\u201d Head Coach Stephen Andrew said. \u201cPlaying a Division I opponent is what we wanted to challenge ourselves with, and I thought it was a good opportunity for us. There was not a whole lot in it, and it allowed our players to get some good minutes.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u00a0Communication and chemistry were solid for VSU after halftime adjustments and the team played evenly with their opponent for the majority of play.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u00a0\u201cWe were a little rushed on the ball early,\u201d Andrew said. \u201cBut once we settled in after five or 10 minutes, I thought it was a pretty even game.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u00a0VSU entered Saturday\u2019s match wanting to match Jacksonville physically and accomplished that task as the game wore on, after an early period where the Jaguars showed their speed.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u00a0\u201cWe wanted to match their athleticism,\u201d Andrew said. \u201cWe did some of that early on I thought we kind of lacked a little bit there.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
Giving players\u2019 game time and evaluating depth was vital for Saturday\u2019s match as rotations were made late in the game.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u00a0\u201cA lot of substitutions late, so that hurt our rhythm a little bit,\u201d Andrew said. \u201cBut it was good to get them into the game and help with their development moving forward.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u00a0Creating chances was positive for the Blazers\u2019 offense but finishing was difficult for VSU in the final third.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u00a0\u201cI thought our final ball and decision-making could be better,\u201d Andrew said. \u201cWe kind of rushed things at times when we didn\u2019t have to, especially against a very athletic team like Jacksonville.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u00a0Even in defeat, Andrew was glad to take away positives from the exhibition match and his team\u2019s performance against Jacksonville.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u00a0\u201cAll in all, I was pretty pleased with our performance,\u201d Andrew said. \u201cIt was a tough match for us but it\u2019s something we can build off of moving forward.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u00a0VSU will look to continue their spring play leading up to the fall season.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"By Dionte Daniel, staff writer\u00a0 VALDOSTA, Ga. \u2014 VSU women\u2019s soccer suffered a late-goal setback against Jacksonville University…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":215814,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[116,118,117],"class_list":["post-215813","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-jacksonville","tag-jacksonville","tag-jacksonville-headlines","tag-jacksonville-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/215813","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=215813"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/215813\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/215814"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=215813"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=215813"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=215813"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}