MORGANTOWN, W.Va. — West Virginia had several things to sort out at halftime of Thursday’s season opener against Dayton after the two teams battled to a scoreless draw with offensive chances few and far between over the first 45 minutes.
It didn’t take the 20th-ranked Mountaineers long to do exactly that, and when they did, there was no looking back.
Sophia Nickel scored 54 seconds into the second half to put WVU in front, and nearly 17 minutes later the home team doubled its advantage via an own goal off a Maya Leoni corner kick, sending the Mountaineers to a 2-0 victory over last year’s Atlantic 10 Conference champion at Dick Dlesk Soccer Stadium.
“First game, you hope for 90 minutes of perfection. The good thing is we won in 45 minutes and now we need to keep adding those minutes and make sure that we complete a game,” West Virginia head coach Nikki Izzo-Brown said. “But we were good enough to win and that’s a great team that I think will do really well in the A-10.”
Nickel broke the ice in the match by finding space in the Dayton defense and receiving a pass from Leoni that put her in position to unleash a left-footed shot from the top of the 18-yard box that beat Flyers’ goalkeeper Avery Strohecker.
“We got through to Maya, and then Maya was able to bend that through their back line, but we were able to pivot it through Maya and then go,” Izzo-Brown said. “On the counter attack, getting the second balls, that’s what we did and we were able to get them when they were out of shape.”
After finding chances difficult to come by for much of the opening half, WVU showed no sign of letting up and earned its third of three corner kicks in the 63rd minute.
That was taken by Leoni, and her corner went directly toward the goal line where a scrum for possession ensued before the Flyers inadvertently sent it into their own net to double their deficit.
After neither team recorded a shot on goal in the first half, a more aggressive approach from WVU over the first 20 minutes of the second half paid off.
“Dayton did a great job. I thought they disrupted play. They definitely were getting to loose balls,” Izzo-Brown said. “They were more effective taking care of the ball, and we just needed to figure out how we could break them down. Make some emotional adjustments, but also we maybe needed to go a little bit more around them and that’s where we started to opening things up.”
That was more than enough offense to support a strong effort from the WVU back line, which combined with keeper Bailey Herfurth’s save on the lone shot she faced, led the way in a shutout to start the season.
WVU is 3-0 all-time against Dayton and defeated the Flyers for the second time in as many seasons.
Thursday marked the first of 10 Mountaineer matches at home this season,
The Mountaineers improved to 15-12-4 in season openers and 330-12-5 all-time when scoring multiple goals to start their 31st season of competition.
“It’s definitely a mentality,” Izzo-Brown said. “It starts with how much pride we have for shutouts.”