BYU women’s soccer ends No. 14 Portland’s perfect season with a 4-1 win
BYU women’s soccer finished off homecoming week with a dominant win over No. 14 Portland Saturday night.
The Pilots were one of two teams this season who remained undefeated, but the Cougars were not about to break their own streak of never losing to Portland in Provo.
The Cougars came out confident to get their 12th consecutive win over the Pilots, doing it in style with fans piling in to watch.
Right off the bat, BYU’s Olivia Wade was eager to get a goal as she’s gotten five goals in just as many games. With an assist from Brecken Mozingo, the score quickly became 1-0 BYU as Wade found the back of the net after a shot off her left foot.
BYU forward Brecken Mozingo picked up on this stating, “We just came into this game knowing who we were as players and who we are as a team and that really helped us going into the game.”
It stayed this way with the battle being controlled by BYU as Portland was doing nothing defensively.
BYU got the second goal of the first half with an unassisted goal by Jamie Shepherd from 20 yards out in the 32nd minute putting BYU up 2-0. This finished the scoring for the first half and the confidence was completely one-sided by BYU.
Coming into the second half the momentum was sluggish on both sides of the ball. But finding her place BYU’s Brecken Mozingo scored off the bottom of her left foot with 35 minutes left to go.
BYU was not only up 3-0 but they are first and only team to score three against Portland this season.
The Pilots reacted to this and got their first goal of the night as Colby Wilson had a one-touch volley dipping under the crossbar in the 70th minute, with the most beautiful goal.
The momentum was building and the Cougars were quick to respond just five minutes later. Brecken Mozingo was back at it for her second goal of the night and this time off her right foot proving she truly can do it all. BYU regained their three-point lead and ended the game at 4-1.
The Cougars wrapped homecoming week up beautifully with a win, 3,447 in attendance keeping the national lead, and gaining Jen Rockwood’s 430th win as BYU women’s soccer’s head coach.
“We knew this was a must-win for us,” BYU head coach Jen Rockwood said. “The girls came in very confident and competitive, we knew it wasn’t going to be easy and we were going to have to give our best and we really fought hard for this one for sure.”
BYU will prepare to face Pepperdine next in Malibu, California on Wednesday.
