EUGENE, Ore. – Oregon stood tall against Washington for 87 minutes but a late goal by the Huskies dealt the Ducks a heartbreaking 1-0 loss Thursday at Papé Field.
After the goal, Ajanae Respass nearly spoiled the Huskies’ night with the equalizer on a breakaway in the final seconds, but Washington goalkeeper Olivia Juarez made a last-ditch save on Respass’ blistering shot.
“It’s a tough way to lose a rivalry game, any game for that matter,” said coach Graeme Abel. “There are these games, you know, especially the last 10 minutes of college games all hell breaks loose.
“And if you turn it into a transition, the game gets stretched and things like that,” said Abel. “It’s kind of the story of our season, especially some of these games at home where we’ve done ever so well. I thought we did some really good things tonight and just got caught on the other side of it.”
How It Happened: Each side had opportunities to score as possession went back and forth throughout the match.
Livvy Moore, who was active all over the field Thursday, had a shot in each half for the Ducks (0-15-2, 0-9-0).
“I’m super proud of us,” said Moore. “We’re in a super-hard position this season, there’s no doubt about it. So to come back out and battle game after game like we have been able to do is really awesome.”
With the match scoreless into the 70th minute, the Ducks pressed forward in an effort to find the back of the net and squeezed off six of their 10 shots in the final 20 minutes of the match, including shots on goal by Respass and Trinity Morales.
“We’ll continue to learn continue to push,” said Abel. “You can see we are going deeper into these games and when go look back at the video, we probably should be ahead 2-0 by the time they scored their first goal. So we need to learn when we create those opportunities – a couple on the backside and had the one at the end – we need to convert those chances.”
A game after tying the school record for saves in a match, goalkeeper Maddie Goldberg had four stops against the Huskies and controlled the air space in front of the net when Washington (8-5-4, 3-4-2) crossed the ball in from the side.
On the play where the Huskies scored, Goldberg initially made the save on a line drive in the 88th minute, but the ball deflected directly to Tatum Thomason who scored to put the Huskies in front.
“There’s obviously some frustration,” said Moore. “Every game is going to have things that don’t go your way, so we have to stick to the game plan and get the ball and do what we know how to do.”
Notable: Oregon came into Thursday’s game having played the most difficult schedule in the country … Goldberg moved within five saves of Katelyn Carter (97, 2016-19) for ninth on the UO career saves list. Goldberg also moved within 10 saves of entering the UO single-season top 10 in saves (89, Amanda Fox, 1999) on Thursday. … Defender Anna Phillips made her 53rd consecutive start.
Quotable:
UO coach Graeme Abel
“You cannot question the fight of this group, you can look at the results, that’s the easy thing to do, but if you actually go back and look at how we’ve lost these games … these guys are fighters and the good teams that we’ve had in my time here they’ve been fighters with regards to that. For me it comes down to experience and a lot of the transition pieces, that will come no doubt about it. But were playing good teams here and we’re causing them problems. We know as we start to put games under our belt for these guys and they start to gain that experience, they will be standing in good stead.”
Up Next: It’s Senior Day for Oregon as the Ducks will host Washington State Sunday at 1 p.m. (Pac-12 Live Stream). Senior Jordan Snyder will be recognized in a pregame ceremony that will begin at approximately 12:45 p.m.
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