South Carolina hadn’t scored a goal in Gainesville since 1997, but it only took a little more than two minutes for all-time school points leader Kayla Grimsley to find the back of the net against Florida in a 2-1 win Friday night.
With a share of the SEC title hanging in the balance, the Gators (14-6, 7-4 SEC) gave up two first-half goals to the Gamecocks (15-5, 9-2 SEC) to allow South Carolina to capture its first SEC title.
“I thought it was a good individual effort by Grimsley,” head coach Becky Burleigh said. “She did a good job, we didn’t cover very well, it was kind of a one-on-one situation. That was disappointing to give up that early goal.”
After opening the SEC slate with a 6-1 start, Florida has come to a grinding conclusion to its 2011 regular season, finishing just 1-3 in the league in its final four games.
The Gators will enter the SEC Tournament with little momentum and a big problem to fix if it hopes to salvage what has been a disappointing end to a promising regular season.
“It’s a little broken record, isn’t it?” a frustrated Burleigh said after the game. “Ultimately, until we figure out how to stop giving up soft goals, we will continue to chase games. Did we outplay them? Absolutely. But did they win and did they deserve to win, because we gave up the two bad goals.”
The early breakdowns have been costly for the Gators, who have a potent offense that has struggled somewhat recently as teams have stacked the box after taking the early lead.
South Carolina didn’t throw a lot of women behind the ball early on, despite needing only a tie to clinch the SEC title outright.
The Gamecocks put plenty of pressure on Florida straight from the opening whistle, and continued to pour it on early in the first half until a second goal game.
After Florida moved into the attacking third in the first minute or two, South Carolina took over possession and played a long ball forward on the counterattack.
Grimsley was able to get hold of the ball near the top of the 18 and shielded Florida defender Kathryn Williamson to get into the box and fire a shot to the lower-left corner of the goal past freshman goalkeeper Taylor Burke.
“The first goal, I was trying to shield it and Kayla was able to get around me and she shot it and she scored,” Williamson said. “That’s why she got SEC Offensive Player of the Year, she’s a quality player. It’s something that we’ve got to learn from, and we’ll just go out and work on it.”
The Gamecocks were able to add another goal in the 22nd minute when Christa Neary got loose on the right flank and curled in a cross to teammate Danielle Au.
Au got onto the end of it and hit a high, floating header that somehow came down into the left upper-ninety in front of Burke.
“Credit to South Carolina, they came in here and got that done. I don’t take anything away from them for that,” Burleigh said. “Ultimately, we hold our destiny in our own hands. We’ve given up a lot of bad goals. When you give up bad goals in our sport, you’re going to lose some games.”
Florida responded well following the second goal and controlled the lion’s share of the possession from the end of the first half through the end of the game.
But with South Carolina stacking the box, Florida had trouble getting on the end of numerous crosses, only able to notch one goal late in the first half.
On the lone goal for the Gators, defender Maggie Rodgers cut past two defenders near the right corner flag and lofted a cross about 10 yards in front of the face of goal. Forward Tahnai Annis got a head to it and buried it into the right side of the net to cut the lead to 2-1.
“I liked our response. I think people got after it, they played hard,” Burleigh said. “It’s just too little, too late sometimes. We start out competitively, give up the early goal, then we start getting all over them. It’s just a broken record. It’s the same story.”
While the early miscues defensively have been costly for the Gators, the finishing touch seems to have eluded the attack-minded Florida team of late.
In their past four games, the Gators have scored just three goals, failing to score in two of them. Florida had numerous opportunities in the second half on crosses into the box in the second half, but seemed just a split-second late arriving to get on the end of them.
“It just has to be kind of a shoulders-up thing, a mentality,” leading scorer Erika Tymrak said. “You’re not going to have any mentality besides I’m going to put this ball in the back of the net. We’re going to have a talk with the team and that’s going to be the mentality going forward. Hopefully that’s going to work for us.”
Part of the problem for the offense has been the fact that with early leads teams have crowded the box. Several times there was a Florida player in the right area, but the player was crowded out on the finish by multiple defenders.
“Ultimately, we have to be good enough to break that down,” Burleigh said. “We know what we need to do. We know that we’ve got to make good runs, we know we’ve got to get on the end of the balls. There were some good opportunities there, we had some good services, we had some people in the box.
“I thought we did a little bit better job at that today, but we lost this game in the first five minutes, when you give up that goal again and again and again. Psychologically, that takes a toll.”
Florida will look to regroup after a tough end to the season as the SEC Tournament and the NCAA Tournament loom on the horizon.
The key for the Gators is fixing the broken record Burleigh is talking about with the mistakes in the back.
“You know, it’s hard because we go through these lulls in games where the first 10 we’re just frantic and then the rest of the game we’re hard,” Williamson said. “It’s definitely something that we’re going to have to fix because we can’t afford to play lackadaisical in the first 10 or they’re going to punish us, which they did. They’re a quality team, and it’s too bad that we didn’t win it tonight, but our season’s not over.”
Williamson and the rest of the team will look to regroup after missing out on a share of the SEC title for the first time since 2005.
Fixing the mentality the team starts with will be paramount if the Gators hope to extend their season much longer.
“It just comes down to what you’re willing to do,” Williamson said. “We just have to get together and basically say that it’s not going to happen again. You’ve got to throw your body on the line. It’s something that we just have to have internally within us.”