Baylor Soccer Prepares for Iowa State and Final Stretch of the Season
Coming off of a Kansas road trip with a win and a tie, Baylor Soccer is entering the final stretch of the season needing likely a few more results to qualify for the Big 12 tournament.
Iowa State (4-8-1, 1-4-0) will square off with the Bears tomorrow night at Betty Lou Mayes field, and the winner — if there is one — will have taken a big step towards securing a spot in the ten-team field.
With the stakes only getting higher as the number of regular season games dwindles, Baylor head coach Michelle Lenard spoke about how her squad is approaching Thursday’s game.
“We’re glad to be back home. We feel confident coming off of the weekend, and we expect a good performance from the group tomorrow.”
She also reiterated how there are no easy games in the Big 12, but is glad that her Bears have very real chances to win any and possibly all of their remaining games.
While the pressure of the standings and tournament qualifications might seem like big weights to those outside of the building, the coaches are taking the classic game-by-game approach
“My mind can go there [to standings, etc.] sometimes but its not a good use of energy.”
Right now, to help beat Iowa State, the focus is on improving offensive output. The Green-and-Gold are coming off of consecutive shutouts but would like to have scored more than two goals in those two games.
“Soccer comes down to scoring goals right? So we have got to find ways to score more goals and create more, better chances.”
Coach Lenard went on to explain that she sees her team passing up good chances to try to get great or perfect chances, which often don’t come to fruition.
Improving the quantity of quality chances is the goal rather than being happy with the current quantity and focusing on making those chances higher quality.
Improving both is great, but look for a higher quantity against the Cyclones.
Looking beyond ISU, the Bears travel to Orlando, Florida this weekend for a Sunday tilt with UCF. The Knights might be the best team left on the Bears’ schedule, though TCU has been a good program for a while now as well.
Also, Lenard got commitments from a couple of high school prospects in the last week and said that, like all recruits that the Baylor staff is targeting, the commits are “High-level players coming from quality clubs.”
Kickoff for Baylor vs. Iowa State is slated for 7 PM CST here in Waco, and the game will be streaming on ESPN+.