The Stony Brook women’s soccer team is going soul-searching.
After two shutout losses this week that saw the team drop to 2-2 in-conference and its 11-game home win streak snapped, the Seawolves do not have a winning record in America East play for the first time since September 2017.
“I think we have to take a look in the mirror,” head coach Tobias Bischof said in an interview with The Statesman. “I think we as a coaching staff, we have to question ourselves and have to see if we came up with the right game plan, and the players have to look at themselves if they performed to the level they actually can perform.”
With two goals in two minutes to kick off the second half, the New Hampshire Wildcats throttled Stony Brook 3-0 on Sunday, Oct. 3 to hand the Seawolves their largest conference defeat in five years.
“We just didn’t really compete well,” Bischof said. “We didn’t really follow the game plan and I thought we played a little bit scared.”
Up 1-0 in the 48th minute, New Hampshire senior forward Francesca Picicci found the net off a long pass from freshman midfielder Meghan Guarente. Seventy seconds later, with the Seawolves still regrouping, Picicci assisted Guarente for the final goal of the day. Junior goalkeeper Emerson Richmond Burke did not make contact with either shot.
Stony Brook controlled most of the match from there, but failed to build momentum when near New Hampshire’s goal. The Wildcats’ defenders quickly closed any open look for the Seawolves, whose passes frequently dribbed out of bounds.
“We need to have better movement up front,” Bischof said. “We have to interchange positions more, we have to make more secondary runs. And we need more support from our outer defenders and from the midfield.”
The Seawolves took 13 shots to New Hampshire’s 10, but only four were on target.
Stony Brook lost 1-0 to the NJIT Highlanders on Oct. 1 in similar fashion. The Seawolves took 14 shots, and though only six were on target, it was more than NJIT’s shot total of five.
But NJIT graduate midfielder Yasmeen Malik’s header off a free kick in the 56th minute was enough to fell Stony Brook, who saw graduate forward Alyssa Francese’s shot in the 79th minute narrowly tipped away.
“We played an okay game today, but in the end we just were not able to create enough chances to win,” Bischof said in a press release. “Credit to their keeper, she made a great save towards the end to protect the lead. Credit to NJIT, who never stopped working hard throughout the whole game.”
UMass Lowell (3-0) now stands as the America East’s only undefeated team. Stony Brook travels to Maine next Sunday for a bounce-back game with the 0-4 Black Bears.
