Issue date: 10/13/08 Section: News

Media Credit: John Eilts Texas A&M sophomore forward Alyssa Mautz heads the ball against Iowa State defender Rachel Brcic Sunday at the Aggie Soccer Stadium. Mautz played 48 minutes in the Aggies' 2-0 win over the Cyclones. A&M improved to 12-1-1 overall and 5-0-1 in Big 12 play. [Click to enlarge]

Media Credit: John Eilts Texas A&M freshman defender Rachael Balaguer steals the ball from Iowa State forward Amanda Nimtz Sunday at the Aggie Soccer Stadium. [Click to enlarge]

The No. 7 Texas A&M soccer team beat the Iowa State Cyclones 2-0 on Sunday afternoon in front of a crowd of 2,626 at the Aggie Soccer Stadium.

With the win the 12-1-1 Aggies remain atop the Big 12, and undefeated in the previous 11 games. The Cyclones slip to 5-8-1 and are without a victory in Big 12 play.

"It's another three points," Head Coach G. Guerrieri said. "It's not the way that we had it drawn up, but with a young team like this sometimes they rarely are the way that you expect them to go. I thought Iowa State did a great job. They were very organized; they kept us in check in a lot of things. When you play against a team that's well coached and committed like that, then you're going to have to go out and do more than just 'play your position.'"

In a game of missed opportunities for both teams, the game remained scoreless until the 80th minute of play. During the first half both teams had scoring chances they failed to capitalize on, ending with A&M taking ten shots and six corner kicks while the Cyclones took seven shots and no corner kicks.

"We had a lot of chances, but we thought the bigger part of it was the desire to do more than a little bit," Guerrieri said. "We were able to control most of the play, even though we didn't play with much energy in the first half. We were able to get a lot of chances, but we didn't have that final 'umph' to get it done."

Guerrieri said to his team at halftime that championship games are played on Sundays. The national championship game in December will be on a Sunday.

"We're not going to get there if we don't take care of other business on Sunday," Guerrieri said. "We have to understand that on Sunday you're usually tired, you're going to have to play against a team that's motivated to beat you, which is something I thought Iowa State did a great job doing."

A&M applied more pressure on the offensive end in the second half, taking 17 shots and seven corner kicks. The Aggies broke the scoreless tie with the first goal at 80:15 by junior midfielder Amber Gnatzig off a corner kick from freshman defender Rebecca Herrera.

Freshman Beth West finished the scoring for the Aggies with a shot that found the back of the net just over a minute after the initial score. Senior Laura Grace Robinson found West just outside the penalty box when West put the ball in the upper-left corner to give A&M the final margin of victory.

With a final score of 2-0, sophomore goalkeeper Kelley Dyer made four saves in her fifth shutout of the year and fourth in the last five games. For the Cyclones, junior Ann Gleason made two saves during the first half, and while subbing in for Gleason, sophomore Ashley Costanzo made two saves during the second half.

"I thought that during the whole game [Iowa State] did a great job," Guerrieri said. "They covered for each other. They were challenging us to attack spaces that we weren't attacking. So it was working for them until we started to throw more numbers out of our midfield out into the front line and until we started to look more to get into the spaces behind them, we weren't doing as well as we expected."

Next games
The Aggies will play 4 p.m. on Oct. 17 at Kansas.

The final Big 12 conference home game is at 1:30 p.m. on Oct.19 against Missouri and will be on ESPNU.

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