BGSU women’s soccer (4-2-1, 1-0 MAC) came out of a highly anticipated opener to Mid-American Conference (MAC) play with a win on a Thursday afternoon over Ball State (5-3, 1-0 MAC) after a performance on both sides of the ball that left Ball State asking themselves what went wrong.
Two second-half goals by the Falcons gave them the padding they needed to rely on impressive performances from sophomore defender Taylor Green, senior defender Isabelle Gilmore, and the entire Bowling Green back line that has solidified what looks to be one of the best defenses in the MAC.
The question going into the match on Thursday afternoon was how well the Falcon defense would perform against, statistically, the best offense in the MAC, and the first half proved that they were up to the challenge.
Addie Chester and Delaney Caldwell, the two Cardinal scorers who have been so successful in their last couple of games, could do very little against relentless coverage and pressure from Bowling Green that focused on keeping the ball out of their hands as much as possible.
A bit more of a fast pace on the offensive side helped the Falcons to get a decent number of chances even though the Cardinals led the shot battle at 7 shots to four for BG after the first half.
The second half would start quickly with a shot from Ball State that forced a save from redshirt junior Madison Vukas, setting the standard for an energetic 45 minutes of soccer.
Bowling Green would find the back of the net for the first time in two weeks via a corner kick that bounced around the box, off junior forward Brynn Gardner, and right into redshirt sophomore forward Alaina Uncapher, who sent a header from the right side of the box to the top left corner of the goal, giving the Falcons the lead in the second half.
Ball State made it clear that they weren’t going to be happy with a 1-0 result from that point forward, ramping up the offensive energy immensely. Still, the Bowling Green defense held, shutting down chances that looked promising until they got to the defensive line, where they were consistently stopped time after time.
A second goal would come with only a few minutes left to go after redshirt sophomore Emily Hollar escapes past the back line and gets a great ball from sophomore midfielder Michelle Hochstadt that allows a look from the left side, and Hollar doesn’t miss.
The success of a more energetic offense that saw a lot more end-to-end looks was extremely promising from a team that looked like they would need to make some tweaks to the offense going into conference play, and those adjustments proved detrimental against a Cardinal team that just couldn’t keep much going.
The defense was an art form all night for Bowling Green, smothering Ball State’s key contributors and taking them out of the game completely, forcing others to try to create chances from outside of a scheme that they are normally used to seeing dominate.
To put the dominance of Bowling Green in perspective, the Cardinals only had two shots on goal all day against the Falcons, while in their last two games, they had six against the Queens and nine against IU Indianapolis.
Even more notably, only one shot from the duo of Chester and Caldwell combined for 18 points in their last two games.
Catch the Falcons as they look to carry their momentum back into Cochrane Stadium for the Battle of I-75 against Toledo (3-3-1) on Sunday, Sept. 22 at 1 p.m.
