The fifth ranked Florida soccer team (10-2, 5-0) comes home after a pair of victories at Texas A&M and Arkansas, and hosts the Mississippi State Bulldogs (3-9, 0-5) Friday night. The Gators will look to extend their winning streak to seven games, as the Bulldogs will look to end a five game losing streak, and notch a win in the SEC.
Savannah Jordan leads the Gator team in goals with nine, and Tessa Andujar leads in assists with seven. For the Bulldogs, Shannen Jainudeen leads the team with six goals, half as many as the team’s total (12) in their 12 games this season.
Gator coach Becky Burleigh weighs in on the youth of Mississippi State and how that helps the Bulldogs.
“That makes them also very dangerous, because they are going to put a lot of people behind the ball, and last year when we played them it took us until the last five seconds of overtime to break that down.”
Florida is home after playing eight of their last 10 on the road. The Gators are 4-0 in the friendly confines of Gainesville, and are outscoring teams 27-8 so far this season.
Burleigh is confident and proud of the team, and of their performances against A&M and Arkansas.
“We really dominated in a lot of areas, much more so than we ever had in the past,” she said.
In 12 games, Mississippi State has allowed 52 goals, and is (1-3) on the road.
Florida averages 2.25 goals per game, and allows .67 goals per game while the Bulldogs average one goal per game, and 2.08 goals against per game.
“There is a lot of soccer left to play,” Burleigh stated earlier in the week, “I think this team has been really good at fighting human nature and not looking forward.”
The match tonight begins at 7 PM.
For audio from Coach Burleigh, click below:
Becky Burleigh talks about Miss St