MORGANTOWN, W.Va. – The West Virginia University women’s soccer team opens the road portion of its Big 12 Conference slate at Kansas on Friday, Oct. 7, at 8 p.m. ET, at Rock Chalk Park in Lawrence, Kansas.
The four-time reigning Big 12 regular-season champions, the Mountaineers (10-1-1, 2-0) look to wrestle away the league’s top standing position from the Jayhawks (8-3-2, 3-0), who enter Friday night riding a four-match win streak.
“It’s easy to get up for the No. 2 team in the nation. I can tell you right now this is going to be a Big 12 Championship atmosphere Friday night,” Mountaineer coach Nikki Izzo-Brown said. “We’re expecting that. We know there’s going to be a lot of grit, a lot of fight and a lot of emotion Friday night. It’s going to be a good game.”
The Mountaineers are enjoying one of the best starts in the program’s 21-year history, as the team hit the 10-win mark for the 17th straight season in just 12 matches. Only the 2015 squad put together a better start, earning 10 wins in 11 matches.
WVU is 12-1-2 in all-time Big 12 road matches, with its lone defeat, a 2-0 loss at No. 7 Texas Tech on Oct. 27, 2013, also its only conference defeat since joining the league in 2012.
Friday is the sixth all-time meeting between the teams. WVU earned the win in each of the previous meetings and has outscored KU, 14-0.
In their last meeting, the Mountaineers earned a resounding 6-0 victory over the visiting Jayhawks on Oct. 16, 2015, at Dick Dlesk Soccer Stadium. The six goals scored were a program record for WVU in a Big 12 match. WVU also earned the win in its last visit to Lawrence, a 2-0 victory at Rock Chalk Park on Oct. 19, 2014. Senior midfielder Ashley Lawrence assisted on both of the team’s goals.
The Mountaineers opened Big 12 play last weekend with two shut-out wins at DDSS, defeating Baylor, 2-0, on Sept. 30 and No. 23 Oklahoma, 2-0, on Oct. 2, and pushing the team’s shutout total to six on the season. The WVU defense, anchored by reigning Big 12 Defensive Player of the Week Kadeisha Buchanan, has allowed six goals all season, the fourth lowest total nationally, and the unit ranks No. 11 in the NCAA and No. 1 in the Big 12 with a 0.486 goals-against average (GAA).
“Posting two shutouts last weekend allowed us to play our game and not force things,” Izzo-Brown explained. “We played a little more West Virginia soccer and didn’t have to chase the other teams. I thought our defense did a good job keeping our opponents off the board and allowing us to be effective.”
Freshman Rylee Foster shows a 7-1-1 mark between the posts this season and is credited with four of the team’s shutouts. She ranks No. 12 nationally, No. 1 in the conference, with a 0.437 GAA and shows 22 career saves.
Junior Michaela Abam, the reigning Big 12 Offensive Player of the Week, paces the Mountaineer attack with 16 points (7 G, 2 A). The Houston native ranks No. 2 in the Big 12 with a 1.33 points/game average. Her team-best goal total also is tops in the conference. With 27 career goals to her name, Abam needs one more score to break onto the program’s all-time career goals list.
As a team, WVU ranks No. 50 nationally, No. 3 in the Big 12, with a 2.08 goals/game average.
The Jayhawks pushed their conference record to 3-0 with a 1-0 victory at Texas on Oct. 2. Katie McClure, the reigning Big 12 Freshman of the Week, scored the game-winner with less than five minutes remaining. Junior Maddie Dobyns made five saves in the win for her third clean sheet of the season and the ninth of her career.
KU ranks No. 8 in the conference with a 1.31 goals/game average. Defensively, the Jayhawks show a 0.805 GAA, the fourth-best average in the Big 12.
Sophomore forward Grace Hagan paces KU with 13 points (5 G, 3 A), and she ranks No. 5 in the Big 12 with a 1.0 points/game average. Dobyns has started 11 of 13 matches in net and owns a 0.73 GAA, the fifth-best average in the conference. She has made 29 saves and allowed eight goals en route to an 8-2-1 record.
