Rams Fall to No. 19 Aggies

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Oct 8

4:00 p.m.

Women's Soccer

vs Gonzaga

Oct 11

1:00 p.m.

Women's Soccer

at San Diego State

Oct 16

6:00 p.m.

Women's Soccer

at Texas State

Oct 22

6:00 p.m.

Women's Soccer

vs Boise State

Oct 25

2:00 p.m.

Women's Soccer

at Oregon State

Team	1	2	Final F
Utah St.	0	3	3
Colorado St.	0	0	0

Utah St.

Colorado St.

The pressure is constant and covers the entire field.

Every touch is challenged, each run tracked and No. 19 Utah State is aggressive when it has the ball in the scoring area. For the first 45 minutes, Colorado State withstood it all, even without controlling possession much.

The final 30 minutes were not so clean, allowing the Aggies to score a trio of goals to produce a 3-0 victory in Pac-12 play, putting a bit of a damper on a Sunday afternoon when six seniors on the team were honored at Rams Soccer Field.

"Coach talks about being patient, and in the first half we were," senior Mia Casey said. "We played smart, communicated and stayed together. In the second half, not so much. Credit to Utah State. They're a really good team with some of the best players in the country. If you make a mistake, they'll take advantage of it."

From the jump, Utah State peppered CSU goalie Addison Huber, putting seven shots on net in the first 45 minutes, all of which she saved. Some of those shots challenged her, but she was also able to get a clean look on some of them.

She would finish the match with nine saves, tied for the sixth-most in a contest for a Ram, a mark which has been hit seven times now in program history. The three goals she surrendered, not on her in coach Keeley Hagen's book.

"She's making the saves she's supposed to make, and I'm pretty sure those three goals, she probably couldn't have made any of them when they were point-blank like that," Hagen said. "So it's certainly nothing that she's doing. I'm happy with her. She just needs to keep getting more experience.

"Game to game, she's definitely getting better, and it just takes time, but we're happy that she's back there."

It's Huber's first year as a starter, and she's spent the time progressing with each team she faces. She has some experience in front of her on the back line, but part of her task is directing what she can see, which is everything.

It's not just making the saves but using her voice to help steer attention to problem areas to avoid shots being taken at all, or at least not getting clean looks. That voice is coming, and after the Rams posted a 2-1 victory in the conference opener, she joked with a trainer she needed some hot tea to soothe her throat.

By the end of Sunday, her voice was hoarse again.
"Well, usually my voice doesn't sound like this. It kind of shows right now," she said. "It kind of just shows how much I'm using it and trying to command it. I've been really working on the coaching of players in action. That's all I need. I don't need to write a whole book. I think that's showing because I just continue hearing from my back line, 'yes, good, Addy.'

"I really like the communication. As that time's going on, my voice has gotten just more commanding, more of a presence in there, and I don't think it gets lost anymore, which I'm really happy about because I've been working on it."

The Aggies broke the scoreless deadlock in the 60^th minute when Solena Sellers tallied off the first of two Kaeda Wilson assists. In the 72^nd minute, Wilson fed Hadli Barrera for a tally, her first of two in the match. She had the closer eight minutes later with a rocket off a feed from Kate Christian.

The first half was proof positive to Hagen what her team can accomplish, even against a stern opponent. The ending showed the importance of sticking to the work.

"I think the thing for us has been the focus on us and just being more defensively organized, which the group has done. And we did that the first half," Hagen said. "We didn't do it as much the second half. We'd win the ball and then we'd give it away. So it's like as soon as you lose the ball in transition, now we're out of shape.

"They did a better job in the second half of exploiting us in transition because we just weren't able to keep it for ourselves. I think our group's getting a little bit better little by little. Just against a team like that, you obviously just can't make those mistakes."

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