Nov. 6, 2013
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ORANGE BEACH, Ala. - The Auburn University soccer team endured a tough offensive onslaught from 21st-ranked Texas A&M Wednesday afternoon in the quarterfinals of the Southeastern Conference Tournament. However, only one of the Aggies' 22 shots was needed to defeat the Tigers, 1-0, ending their run at the conference tournament.
With the loss, Auburn falls to 8-9-4 on the season and stops its run at a possible third-straight conference championship appearance. For Texas A&M, it ups its record to 15-4-1 for the year and will advance to the tournament semi-finals to play the winner of Georgia and South Carolina.
"It was a really hard-fought match," Auburn head coach Karen Hoppa said. "Obviously, Texas A&M is a good team and they had us under a lot of pressure in the first half. Unfortunately, we gave up a deflection goal, but I thought our girls were fantastic in the second-half. We came out fighting and gave it everything we had, we just couldn't get one to fall.
The lone goal came in the 16th minute of the first half when Allie Bailey received a pass from Shea Groom and proceeded to take the open shot from about 10 yards out. The ball ricocheted off Auburn defender, Kim Spence, and beat junior goalkeeper, Alicen Wright to her left side.
The one goal allowed did not diminish the Auburn defense's performance as Wright tallied six saves in the match and was only the fifth goal allowed over the previous eight-game stretch that propelled Auburn into the SEC Tournament.
Seven shots were tallied for the Orange and Blue in the match with six coming in the second half. Auburn stayed aggressive to the final minute, looking to equalize, but wasn't able to penetrate the Aggie defense for the score. Freshman Casie Ramsier notched the only shot on goal as her one-timer from just inside the top of the box at the 36-minute mark in the second half was right at the keeper
This was the eighth match this season that was decided by one goal on Auburn's schedule. The Tigers finished 3-5 in one-goal matches this year.
Wednesday's loss caps an amazing second-half run of the season for the Tigers as they played their way to an undefeated 3-0-3 record to finish the year and capture the 10-seed in the SEC Tournament. After starting conference play 0-5, Auburn notched three-straight ties to earn their first conference points of the season and then won three-straight matches against Arkansas, Vanderbilt and Alabama to make the postseason.
"This experience is going to help this group in the future tremendously," Hoppa said. "I couldn't be more excited about the future of Auburn soccer. The amount of kids that played key roles for us and were big in big games, this experience is going to carry us a long way in the future."
For complete coverage on the Auburn soccer team, visit AuburnTigers.com, follow @AU_Soccer on Twitter and `like' the Auburn University Soccer page on Facebook.