Brooks Monaghan frustrated with preseason result, but optimistic for upcoming season

Wednesday night was the second home preseason game of the year for the University of Memphis women’s soccer team. It was a fairly entertaining game featuring three 30-minute periods rather than two 45-minute halves, in which the Tigers fell behind early, took a 2-1 lead, had the game tied up at 2, took a late 3-2 lead, and ultimately finished at 3-3. Following Monday night’s preseason opener against Missouri (a game which Tiger fans were undoubtedly keen on winning, given Missouri’s dastardly decision to avoid playing their football game against the U of M at Simmons Bank Liberty Stadium) coach Brooks Monaghan expressed a small measure of frustration with the performance against Lipscomb on Wednesday night.

“Yeah, I mean it’s preseason right? Tonight we went really newcomer heavy, so mistakes are going to happen. The frustration is making the same mistakes from one game to the next. That’s what I was frustrated from. It’s not about necessarily making a mistake but it’s about when players don’t process certain things, that’s what frustrates me at this time of year.”

But Monaghan also pointed out that it’s better to get those mistakes out of the way now, in the preseason, so that they aren’t an issue when the games start to matter.

“Well yes. You can take different approaches. You can go play teams and just win the games and think you’re all great. Obviously Missouri is good. Lipscomb is always good in their league. You want to play good teams so they exploit you in certain areas. But tonight it wasn’t about them exploiting us. This was kind of a game, and this is no offense to the team we were playing, but I feel like we created the chances for them. But again it’s part of preseason.”

The good news is that it wasn’t all frustration from Monaghan. He sees plenty of stuff from his team that he likes and the word he kept coming back to was potential.

“There’s definitely a lot of potential here right?” he said. “The depth on paper right now is going to be much deeper of a team than we had last year. You know the returning players and you set certain standards for them and I know what they’re capable of. With the new kids there’s a lot of potential with the youth. You’ve got to have potential first but it’s the fine details. No matter how much potential or how good they are, if they don’t do the little things right, it’s going to keep them off the field. Because at this level every little thing matters and the fine details a lot of the time are difference makers. “

Coach Monaghan then took a moment to espouse praise for the other things that he did like.

“Look, there’s been very good leadership. They’ve been working their tails off. There’s a lot of positives. It’s just early you know? You only have so much time to go over everything. It takes a while. I’m not frustrated in the big picture of things, just in certain moments.”

Big picture, the women’s soccer team at the University of Memphis is currently the most consistently successful team on campus. Since 2016, they have amassed a record of 92-32-13 (W-L-D) for a win percentage of 72%. In that same time they have won three conference championships, including the last two. They have also made six NCAA Tournament appearances, including five in a row. In 2021 they hosted an NCAA Tournament game against LSU and won 3-0 in front of a Billy Murphy Track & Soccer Stadium record crowd of 1,309. Just last year, they made a run to the Sweet Sixteen (a place the men’s basketball program hasn’t been since 2009) beating St. Louis 1-0, thrashing Mississippi State 4-0 and then overcoming 2-0 and 3-2 deficits before eventually falling on penalties to Arkansas in Fayetteville.

When asked how they can sustain that level of consistent success coming into a new season, Monaghan had plenty to say.

“Well it’s kind of doing what we’re doing right now. Every year is a new year right? You’re cramming as much in as you can and you’re hoping that over time we continue to trend this way. And we’re on that trend. It’s just that those little mistakes, and I know I’m being repetitive with that, that you have to learn from to be able to continue to go in this direction. And this group, they’re hungry. “

He continued, “The next game we play as close to a real game as possible. So what we do is we go returner heavy and I think the last game with the returners there was maybe a little bit of ‘Hey, we did this last year’ and Missouri was like “Hey, we’ve got a chance to play a team that went to the Sweet Sixteen’ and that was a little bit of a wake-up call which I think was good.”

“With the newcomers, you’ve got to get them out there and let them make mistakes so they can learn from them but like I said if you keep making the same mistakes it’s very frustrating. But the talent is there, the work rate is there, and the leadership is there. It’s all the little fine details we have to get right in order to give ourselves a chance to do what we did last year. Because I can tell you right now, this team is more talented than last year’s team, but that doesn’t guarantee anything. It’s all the intangibles like making sure the group is coming together, making sure they love each other, and making sure they’ll go to war for each other.”

The Tigers are ranked #20 in the preseason poll and while Coach Monaghan admits it’s nice, it’s not something they spend a whole lot of time thinking about.

“I think a lot of that comes from last year. They look at how you did last year and they look at the players you so lost so based on what we were able to do last year I think it’s fair. You don’t get caught up in it. I mean, preseason is only preseason. You drop one match and you’re out of it. It’s nice from a recruiting standpoint but at the end of the day it doesn’t get you anything. It’s nice to have respect and it’s nice to be respected around the country. We’ve been ranked preseason in the last four or five years but it hasn’t guaranteed us anything.”

To close out the night, Monaghan was asked if he thought that the on-going Women’s World Cup would provide a boost for the profile of his team.

“Well I mean, it’s crazy because we’ve got Americans and we’re out. We’ve got Canadians and they were out before us. And we’ve got Germans and they’re out so all our countries are done.” he said with a laugh. “The girls have been following and it’s tough because of when the games are but I think it does bring a little more excitement.”

And then Coach Monaghan added one final sentiment.

“With me saying all of this stuff, I am extremely optimistic. I always set the bar high for every team that puts on a Memphis jersey. I try to be realistic. These have been two good matches for us. We try not to worry about the scoreline. I think we are making the progress that we need to be a pretty good team but at the end of the day we still have a lot of work ahead of us.”

The Tigers have one final preseason game this Saturday at Vanderbilt before they begin the regular season with three straight home games at the Billy Murphy Track & Soccer Field over at the South Campus: Thursday August 17th against Southern, Sunday August 20th against Ole Miss and then Thursday August 24th against Ohio State. All three games are set for 7pm kickoffs.