Oct. 6, 2016
By Jack Dougherty, GoPSUsports.com Student Staff Writer
UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. - The No. 13 Penn State women's soccer team enters its weekend road trip with seemingly little to improve upon.
The Nittany Lions are undefeated in Big Ten play and have allowed only two goals in their last seven matches. The only game they failed to win during that stretch was a 1-1 draw against No. 17 Minnesota, which was ranked inside the top ten earlier this year.
The back line gets better every week, the offense is starting to find its groove, and Amanda Dennis is starting to take charge of her role between the posts as a freshman leader.
"Right now with each progressing week we're just trying to get better and more cohesive as a unit, just becoming tighter knit overall," said Charlotte Williams. "I think we're just focusing on working hard for each other and showing up every day at practice."
There may be few apparent weaknesses on this team, but head coach Erica Dambach is never satisfied. Like any good coach, Dambach is continually finding a specific area to improve and pounding it at practice.
This week it was crossing and finishing.
Tuesday's practice ran a bit longer than normal because the team did nothing but crossing and finishing drills for the last hour. Dambach drew up drills that involved the entire team from the strikers to the goalkeeper to nail down a unified effort to create more chances from the wide areas.
"We challenged them a bit in crossing and finishing, which is something that we really need to focus on going into the weekend," said Dambach. "We created a lot of chances in wide space against Illinois, and just an area we need to be better in right now."
Dambach mentioned the Lions produced 28 crossing opportunities in last Friday's 2-0 win against Illinois but created only one good chance from them.
"It's not the players in the box, it's not the wide players, it's the combination of all of it," said Dambach. "Overall I think the communication just has to be better in that area."
Look for Penn State to place an emphasis on playing the ball out wide and attacking the middle via crosses this upcoming weekend. The Lions will square off against Indiana on Thursday night and Maryland on Sunday afternoon.
Penn State shutout both teams last year at home.
Indiana boasts a 5-7-1 record overall and a 2-3 mark in conference play. The Hoosiers are 2-4-1 at home and have lost two of their last three overall.
Indiana possesses a balanced offensive attack that features nine players with at least one goal and eight with double-digit shots on the season. Mykayla Brown leads the way with four goals, including three game-winners.
"They've come out in a bunch of different ways this season, a couple different shapes," Dambach said. "They're young. They've got a bunch of freshmen that are starting for them, which can be good and bad."
One of those freshman is goalkeeper Sarah L'Hommedieu. L'Hommedieu owns a 1.47 goals against average and has recorded 57 saves, good for second most in the conference.
Maryland, on the other hand, is almost the polar opposite of Indiana.
The Terrapins (3-9-1, 1-4) have four players with one goal each and two forwards, Chelsea Jackson and Jarena Harmon, who have scored 17 combined.
Jackson (nine goals) and Harmon (eight goals) have accounted for 80.95% of Maryland's goals so far this season. Jackson is tied for the most goals scored in the Big Ten and Harmon is tied for fourth.
"Those two players have played well," said Dambach. "They're fast. They're dangerous. We're going to have to protect the space behind our back line."
Unlike Indiana, which uses one goalie, Maryland has featured three different keepers this year. Katelyn Jensen has had the most success of the three, starting seven games and posting a team-best 1.77 goals against average.
Indiana and Maryland both reside near the bottom of the Big Ten standings, but taking teams lightly always causes trouble. Dambach and her troops will have to focus on handling a road environment calmly.
"At this point, every match is a Big Ten championship match," Dambach said. "We're sitting in a good position to keep challenging so we've got to make sure that they understand with six matches left that each one of them can determine how the league finishes and that we've got to make sure that we're there to play that particular match."
Penn State currently sits in second place in the Big Ten with a 4-0-1 conference mark. Two wins this weekend could go a long way to catching Michigan, which is in first place at 5-0 in the conference.