For defenders, success does not always show up in the statistics most often considered sexy. For many teams, it’s the rare exception when a member of its backline dents the goals or assists column. But for the Terrapins women’s soccer team, through four games, one number stands out: zero.
That’s the number of goals the No. 3 Terps (3-0-1) have allowed this season — 380 minutes of soccer, including 110 against a powerful No. 2-ranked Stanford team (3-0-1).
This afternoon, the Terps hope to extend their streak against St. Louis (1-2-0) at Ludwig Field, where another shutout would tie the program record of five straight. They could break it Sunday, when they play at Cornell.
A week ago, the vaunted Cardinal peppered the Terps’ net in the opening 45 minutes of what ended in a scoreless tie. While Stanford had several good chances, the two best scoring opportunities for Terps opponents both came in their season opener, a 1-0 home win against Minnesota. Both also showed the strengths this Terps team has.
The first chance came in the 33rd minute, when Golden Gophers midfielder Olivia Bagnall curled a free kick from 20 yards out just over the head of several Terps defenders positioned in a wall. But the ball did not pass goalie Yewande Balogun, who recorded her season’s first stop in stunning fashion with an extended, diving left hand to preserve the Terps’ one-goal lead.
“That’s what you need from your goalkeepers,” Pensky said of the play after the game. “Saves they’re supposed to make and then once or twice or three times in a game they have to come up big. And in that particular situation, she had to come up huge and she got a nice touch on it and knocked it away.”
While Balogun saw a fair amount of action as a freshman, last year was her first as the squad’s full-time keeper following the departure of former first-team All-ACC goalie Mary Casey.
The redshirt senior is one of the team’s three captains, along with defender Lydia Hastings and midfielder Amy O’Sullivan. The 5-foot-8 keeper currently has 18 saves and, according to Pensky, is at the top of her game.
“Her confidence is on another level right now,” he said. “Certainly, between the plays she’s making and the voice she’s giving us, it’s helping us out.”
The other critical defensive play against then-No. 22 Minnesota came in the game’s waning moments, by which point substitute Kristen McAfee had entered the game for an ailing Mallory Baker.
In the 87th minute, McAfee was in the right place at the right time. Following a chaotic sequence near the Terps’ net, a Golden Gophers attacker found herself with the ball and a clear view of the net. But McAfee dashed forward and cleared the ball off the goal line, sending what would have been the game-tying score out with her booming right foot.
“I would take that over scoring a goal,” McAfee said of the play. “That’s something we take pride in — not letting in any goals. So to get the shutout, that was awesome for me as a defender.”
As for the shutouts, the Terps are at four and counting. For Baker, Hastings and the backline’s other two starters, senior Skyy Anderson and junior Megan Gibbons, the goal is to not allow one.
“To shut them out and keep them off the scoreboard,” Pensky said of the Terps’ defensive performance against Stanford. “They scored four goals against Penn State [and scored] five [goals] two days after that. We kept them off the scoreboard for 110 minutes. I’m very proud.”
TERPS NOTE: O’Sullivan remained sidelined with a concussion in the Terps’ 3-0 win against Navy. The senior captain has yet to see the field since the squad’s first exhibition game, a 1-0 win against No. 13 West Virginia on August 10. But after the team’s Navy win, Pensky said that she had benefited following a few days without activity and was “getting much closer to being 100 percent healthy.”
