Climbing the SEC rankings week by week, LSU soccer looks next to take down the Texas Longhorns on the road during a Thursday night matchup in Austin.<\/p>\n
Currently at 1-3-2 in the conference, the Tigers sixth road matchup could be the turning point of their season. A win would give LSU 3 more points, possibly bumping it up to the official contention to make November\u2019s SEC tournament.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe know we\u2019ve got the quality in this group, which we saw tonight in that second half, in particular, to get the points that we need,\u201d associate head coach Seb Furness said following LSU\u2019s draw against Arkansas.<\/p>\n
Though it\u2019s no easy task, a win over the Longhorns isn\u2019t unattainable for the Tigers. Texas sits at 10th in the conference standings holding a few substantial wins under its belt.<\/p>\n
On Oct. 4, Texas found a statement win over Oklahoma, who currently ranks No. 7 in the SEC. Crawling back from a 1-goal lead with 2 unanswered goals of their own, the Longhorns showed second half dominance, similar to what the Tigers have seen against both Florida and Arkansas.<\/p>\n
The win against Oklahoma would cap off a four-game unbeaten streak for the Longhorns, where they notably finished in a draw against Florida and Tennessee the two weeks prior.<\/p>\n
A loss to Kentucky last week, however, ended Texas\u2019 point reaping and the team will surely be on the hunt for redemption against the Tigers, hoping to return to the Top 25 United Coaches Poll it recently fell out of.<\/p>\n
On its squad, Texas is led by a lethal frontline composed of sophomores Audrey Bryant, Ava McDonald and Ashlyn Anderson. Right behind them is the Longhorns leading goal scorer, Amalia Villarreal, who combined with the frontline has accumulated 16 of the team\u2019s 24 goals scored this season.<\/p>\n
The Longhorns offense is threatening to an LSU defense that only recently started to find its rhythm, but if the Tigers can hold off Texas like they did against Arkansas in the second half, then the LSU offense will have multiple opportunities to lay it on thick against Texas goalkeeper Bayliss Flynn.<\/p>\n
Flynn has faced a total of 57 shots on target from opponents in 2026, but 42 saves has helped coral the pressure to only 13 goals scored against the Longhorns this season.<\/p>\n
Players like Linka Ono and Sariyah Bailey will be especially useful for the Tiger offense, offering their talents of placing the ball in hard to reach places off of unique shots.<\/p>\n
The LSU squad has been on an upward trend that it hopes to continue come Thursday night. Scoring 5 goals in their past three unbeaten games, the Tigers now sit evenly with the Tennessee Lady Vols, whom they lost to in the conference opener.<\/p>\n
On a relatively even playing field with the Longhorns, LSU will look to continue its streak of building up its conference record and stacking points to improve its seeding in Pensacola.<\/p>\n
With just under three weeks left of the regular season, postseason chances are up for grabs to whoever wants it most. The Tigers have made it clear that they\u2019re hungry for a spot.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re at the stage of the season where we\u2019re tracking everyone\u2019s results and seeing who\u2019s climbing the table, who\u2019s dropping points,\u201d Furness said. \u201cI think this group is motivated to just focus on the next game.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Climbing the SEC rankings week by week, LSU soccer looks next to take down the Texas Longhorns on…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":466759,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[27,29,28],"class_list":["post-466758","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-texas","tag-texas","tag-texas-headlines","tag-texas-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/466758","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=466758"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/466758\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/466759"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=466758"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=466758"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=466758"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}