Thursday night was full of mixed emotions for the Memphis women’s soccer team out at the Billy Murphy Track & Soccer Stadium. On one hand, they dropped another result at home, this time 1-1 to the Tulsa Golden Hurricane after a similarly disappointing home draw against East Carolina earlier this month, that prompted Coach Brooks Monaghan to say that draws are like losses for his team. But on the other hand, the Tigers got the point they needed to ensure sole possession of first place in the American Athletic Conference and the outright regular season title.
Tulsa appeared content just to sit back and absorb the pressure from Memphis and that strategy seemed to be paying off as they took the Tigers into halftime tied 0-0. Memphis finally found a breakthrough in the second half with a wonderful goal from Ai Kitagawa in the 72nd minute that looked to have been enough for the Tigers to get the win. But Tulsa didn’t hang their heads and eventually tied the game up with six minutes to play on a counterattack that came out of nowhere.
Coach Brooks Monaghan was none too pleased with how Tulsa was able to get on the board.
“We started doing things that were not team-oriented,” said Monaghan. “We started doing things individually. We started trying to make plays. We got away from simple, right? We got away from simple. And I’d have to watch it. There’s a couple of things that are on my mind that were just mistakes. You know, mistakes that shouldn’t happen if you’re really managing the game.”
Coach Monaghan was also not thrilled that his team was unable to put Tulsa away, despite registering a whopping 32 shots, to just 6 for the Golden Hurricane.
“Clearly, I thought we were the better team,” he said. “But it’s not about just being the better team, being on the ball, or having better players. Man, there just has to be more fire to put your foot on somebody’s throat and bury a game. And unfortunately, that’s something this group, my group and I take full responsibility, is just lacking a little bit. It’s one thing we just spent time talking about. We have an opportunity to learn from all this and take it into the next segment of the season which is the conference tournament.”
That conference tournament will start for the Tigers on Monday down in Lakewood Ranch, Florida. By virtue of winning the regular season title outright, Memphis will be the number one seed. Funnily enough, their first opponent is, once again, the Tulsa Golden Hurricane. Monday’s game is set for a 6:30pm Central Time kickoff on ESPN+.