Heading into the 80th minute of the Iowa soccer game against Nebraska-Omaha on Sunday, it looked as though the game would come down to the wire and end with the Hawkeyes winning 1-0.
After the 86th minute, it was obvious that would not be the case. The Hawkeyes logged 3 goals in slightly more than six minutes to shut out the Mavericks, 4-0.
“I didn’t like just flat-out our mentality [in the first half],” said head coach Dave DiIanni. “It took a long time to score the goals and get the benefit of playing a little bit better, but we stayed at it, and I was happy with that.”
Iowa was able to convert on only 1 of 14 shots in the first half, and the missed chances did not sit well with DiIanni.
During halftime, the coach urged the team to be more aggressive and competitive in order to convert on opportunities.
“It was unfortunate, because I thought we should have scored 2 or 3 goals right off the bat, but we didn’t,” DiIanni said. “The game kind of got away from us for the first half. I was not very happy with our movement off the ball, and our energy level, and even just moving the ball. We had a discussion at halftime, made some adjustments.”
That discussion had an effect on one player in particular, freshman Alina Magruder. Although Magruder only played 25 minutes of the game, she knocked in the first 2 goals of her career within seven minutes of each other.
“Right now, we’re still kind of trying to find the right chemistry, so we played a lot of players today,” DiIanni said. “We played a lot of players on purpose to see maybe who was going to create a little bit of a spark and find themselves a little bit in the system.”
A total of 22 players rotated into the game for the Hawkeyes, leaving just seven players listed on the roster n the bench.
With so many seeing game time, players had to work with the amount of time they were given in order to show what they can do and try to provide the spark DiIanni sought.
“No matter how much time you get, Dave [DiIanni] always tells us to make a difference, make a difference,” Magruder said. “So going in there, I felt like I did that.”
Bri Toelle — who assisted Karly Stuenkel on Stuenkel’s goal late in the game — also assisted Magruder, a native of Mustang, Oklahoma, on the first goal and Abbey Toureene for the second.
Redshirt freshman Jenna Kentgen opened the scoring, claiming the first goal of the game and of her career during the 33rd minute. The score came on a corner kick by Rachele Armand, a junior transfer from Louisville.
Sophomore Stuenkel was the only other Hawkeye to score, and just like Kentgen and Magruder, the goal was the first of her career.