Hess Pulls the Strings as Sather & Omholt Lead No. 11 Baylor Over Cincinnati 2-1
WACO, Texas — No. 11 Baylor Soccer made a clean sweep of the week at home with a 2-1 win over the visiting Cincinnati Bearcats on Sunday afternoon at Betty Lou Mayes Field.
Noelle Sather scored her second goal in as many games to give the Bears a first-half lead, and Lauren Omholt made it 2-0 early in the second half before the Green and Gold conceded from a set piece to make the final 17 minutes a bit more tense.
Olivia Hess assisted both Baylor goals, making it three assists this week and four in the last four games for the sophomore midfielder.
“I thought we played well from start to finish,” said Baylor head coach Michelle Lenard after the game. “I thought there was a period of time when we scored the second goal; right afterwards, we could have had a third. Like we were really, really dominating in that moment, and had we scored that third goal, I think [it's] game over. So that’s the difference between 3-0 and 2-1; they're both wins, but that's the game. It's very competitive. Teams are going to fight. They're going to try to get back in it. We've got to learn to manage those moments a little bit better. But happy with the result. That's a tough team. They don't concede a lot of goals.”
Baylor was in firm control throughout the first fifteen minutes, but Cincinnati grew into the game and forced important interventions from the Bears’ defense. One especially dangerous chance for the Bearcats came shortly after the first-half hydration break when Baylor struggled to clear a deflected cross. Azul Alvarez was called into action, making a strong save with her left hand as she dove to stop the well-positioned attempt.
A little over ten minutes later, in the 37th minute, an Olivia Hess corner kick fell to Noelle Sather on the far side of the Cincinnati goal. The angle was tight, but the Bearcats’ keeper had crashed into one of her defenders, slowing the reaction to Sather’s threat on goal. The junior midfielder settled the ball with one touch and blasted it into the roof of the net with a second touch. 1-0 Baylor.
“It's funny because Noelle scored a goal like that at training before she went to Poland, and she just bombed it in the upper corner. And I was like, how often do we think she could actually do that?” said Coach Lenard. “It was such a hard angle, and then she does it again. But when it went to her in that moment, that's what flashed through my mind. I thought, ‘She's about to score this just like she did at practice’.”
After the halftime break, Baylor quickly doubled their lead through senior winger Lauren Omholt. The former Purdue transfer retook sole possession of leading goal scorer for Baylor when she collected a blocked Olivia Hess shot, cut back toward the middle against the flow of the reacting defense, and wrapped her foot around the ball. Omholt’s shot went against her momentum toward the left side of goal, and despite the Bearcats’ keeper getting her fingertips to it, the ball ended up in the back of the net. 2-0 Baylor in the 49th minute.
“When I received the ball, I just thought, ‘Let me mix it up’,” said Omholt after the game. “I feel like a lot of the times I go, I stay wide and kind of look for that cross. But Liv made a great run to pull a defender out, so I knew that was an opportunity for me to cut inside and have that shot.”
Olivia Hess nearly set up another goal about five minutes later, but the Cincinnati defense did just enough to affect Callie Conrad’s glancing, close-range effort.
The visitors grew into the second half similar to the first. They weathered the Bears’ onslaught, then caused issues as Baylor was rolling substitutes into the game to spell the heat-sapped starters.
In the 73rd minute, the Bearcats executed a short-corner routine, setting up a pair of headers in the center of the Baylor box. The second header was particularly uncontested and was directly in front of goal, with multiple Bears missing the goal scorer Joy Kimwemwe. Her header from inside the six-yard box was well positioned and too quick for Alvarez to get to. The Bears’ lead was now halved to 2-1.
“We had a letdown moment on that corner. We've got to get that resolved. At that point, we had made several changes, and I think we're trying to quickly get organized. And they caught us not prepared, which is not a good thing, but a fixable thing for us, and we can definitely fix that moving into our next few games.”
Attention can stay on those next games as the Bears did see out the rest of this contest to win 2-1 for the second time this week.
Baylor is now 2-0-1 in the Big 12 and sits in a three-way tie for second in the conference with Texas Tech and Kansas. The Houston Cougars sit alone in first at 3-0-0 with wins over Kansas State, Iowa State and Oklahoma State.
The next games for the Bears are a pair of top-half tilts starting this Friday with the Kansas Jayhawks visiting Waco. After that, it’s a top-15 matchup with No. 13 Colorado in Boulder the following Thursday. Tough opponents, but plenty of time for the Bears to take care of details they have missed in recent weeks.
They have until 7 p.m. on Friday to make corrections, then Bears vs. Jayhawks kicks off on ESPN+.
