AMES — The Kansas Jayhawks rolled into Ames Friday and beat the Iowa State Cyclones 3-1.
“It’s just a situation where the game could have gone either way, but I think that we didn’t win the fight,” Iowa State head coach Matt Fannon said.
Iowa State opened up the scoring in the first half, but it was all Kansas until the end.
First half fireworks
Iowa State removed the goose eggs from the scoreboard when freshman forward Megan Walters beat multiple members of the Kansas defense.
Kansas later leveled the game at one goal, with just under 20 minutes to play in the first half. The opportunity arose from a penalty committed by junior midfielder Lucy Froitzheim.
Sophomore midfielder Kate Langfelder buried the equalizer with an assist from junior midfielder Livvy Moore.
Langfelder received the ball just inside the 18 yard box, where she then used a power shot to get past Cyclone redshirt-sophomore goalkeeper Kasey Cannistraro.
Kansas nearly took over the lead with 14 minutes to go in the first half. Jillian Gregorski had an opportunity to go head-on with Cannistraro.
Cannistraro took her shot straight to the chest at point-blank range, one of just 14 total shots the Jayhawks recorded in the first 45 minutes.
Behind the box score
The box score of a soccer match doesn’t depict the full story. However, certain aspects of the statistic sheet can be used in ways to depict a game.
The Jayhawks had possession of the ball for 63% of the first half. In their time of possession, Kansas was in the attacking half of the field for 64% of that time.
The Jayhawks won the middle portion of the field all night. This allowed their defensive backs to play super high on the pitch.
When the Cyclones were able to clear the ball out of the zone, the Jayhawk defenders were able to send it right back in. This led to a massive amount of possession in the attacking zone for Kansas.
The Cyclones allowed 11 shots on goal. The Big 12 average going into the game was 6.82.
“We’re not going to say that they didn’t put any decent shots on goal because they’ve scored three,” Fannon said. “But at the same time we’ve defended well enough, we’ve been giving away too many of those opportunities because we didn’t win the fight further upfield.”
The contest was also extremely physical. 23 fouls were handed out by the official; 12 for Kansas and 11 for Iowa State.
Three cautions were also handed out to the Jayhawks. Gregorski, junior defender Caroline Castans and freshman forward Jordan Rowan all received cautions from referee Chris Ruska.
“We’ve been really good physically, and it’s something that we do well,” Fannon said. “Tonight we didn’t do it as well as they did, and literally that’s the difference in the scoreline.”
Iowa State will take on Houston at 6 p.m. Thursday at the Cyclone Sports Complex for the Cyclones’ annual pink-out game.
