Arizona soccer drops quartet of goals to Washington Huskies

Arizona hadn’t won a PAC-12 game going into Friday night’s match at Mulcahy Stadium. A win against Washington looked possible, as the Cougars have had their own struggles. It wasn’t to happen as the Wildcats got crushed 4-1 by the visitors.

The home side’s back line had a different look with an injured Sabrina Enciso on the sidelines and Sarah Rice starting in her place.

The Wildcats started strong, but their initial shots didn’t find the back of the net. They fell behind in the 21st minute when Washington’s Ruby Hellstrom took advantage of a defensive error. Her shot from just inside the box made it past Hope Hisey.

In the closing minutes of the half, Washington was awarded a penalty kick. Fans and players thought it was a soft call and Summer Yates drove it by a diving Hisey.

Arizona kept the pressure up in the second half, but didn’t see an award for it on the scoreboard. Washington scored again in minutes 50 and 70. The visitors saw the lead as insurmountable and did a late substitution of little used players that included the rare move of replacing their keeper.

A bit of late game heroics came from Jill Aguilera, who took full advantage of a free kick awarded in the 85th minute. It was a bit late to put the team back in the match, but put Aguilera two goals behind Wildcat Hall of Famer Mallory Miller on the all-time scoring list.

Needless to say, a loss where the opponent scores four goals is not a good thing. Even worse, Washington hasn’t been known for their scoring prowess. It was only the second time this season they scored more than one goal in a match.

Could you call this a poor performance? Not so, said coach Becca Moros.

“We played some of the best football we’ve played in controlling the game,” she said. “I don’t know how we ended up down 2-0 after that first half performance...we were all of a sudden down after dominating the whole thing.”

The first half ended with Arizona having 8 shots to Washington’s 3. The team came out, in Moros’s telling, “flat” in the second half and Washington gained the shot advantage, but the teams ended even with 13 each.

“I don’t really have answers to this one,” she added. “I don’t think they came at us with anything clever.”

Given how much impact the penalty kick had on the game, there was understandable grousing about the refereeing from both players and fans. Moros called the first half penalty kick “soft.”

“Sometimes that’s just how things roll out. Sometimes there’s a little bit of subjectivity on the field,” said Moros. “That happens.”

“I do feel for the team tonight...there’s no doubt in my mind that we were the better team,” she added.