STARKVILLE — Mississippi State needed a breakthrough.
The Bulldogs were knotted up at 2-2 against LSU on Sunday night as both teams had been held scoreless after scoring all four goals in the first half.
Something felt like it was going to give, and that breakthrough came in the 84th minute off a throw-in. Sophomore Haley McWhirter received the ball and as she made a move into the 18-yard box, she was slide-tackled to the ground.
Referee Corey Rockford signaled for a penalty, and McWhirter was the one to take it, stepping up and slotting one in the bottom left corner, the game-winner for Mississippi State in a 3-2 win.
“I just went over there and said, ‘just get something out of this throw-in,’” McWhirter said. “I tried to post up. I tried to draw a foul or get something, but it was really just the team backing me up.”
Sunday’s match started out as chaotic as it ended, with three goals scored within the first six minutes of play, a wild span of less than three minutes of action.
MSU (9-0-2) scored its first two goals in almost identical fashion, both coming off corner kicks. Of the Bulldogs’ first three corners in the match, two directly led to goals.
“You always challenge your team to start fast,” head coach James Armstrong said. “We started the fastest we’ve started all season,”
However, in the middle of those successful goals came a direct response from LSU. Mississippi State scored in the fourth minute, a Gwen Mummert header into the bottom-left corner.
Not even 20 seconds later, the Tigers answered on the counter as Alesia Garcia caught the MSU defense sleeping, and put one past the diving Maddy Anderson to tie things up.
In a pinball redirection off that next corner, Maggie Wadsworth found herself open just in front of goal for her team-leading seventh goal of the season, further extending her lead amongst SEC freshmen.
Despite a late goal conceded in the half off a great save from Anderson, LSU’s Lilly Wilkes scoring off the save deflection, MSU really settled itself down and settled the game down from that early barrage of goals.
“You always challenge your team to start fast,” Armstrong said. “We started the fastest we’ve started all season, which was great, but we slipped up a little bit to go into the locker room 2-2 at half. We said we needed to be more composed on the ball, a little bit smarter with our game management decisions and I think the girls did a better job of that in the second half.”
The second half showed the Mississippi State team that most have come to know this season, out-shooting LSU, 9-2 in the half, and had six corners to LSU’s one.
Along with a more constant offensive barrage, the Bulldogs played much better from the back and did a fantastic job at preventing LSU from having the same attacking success that it did in the first 45 minutes of play.
“We were struggling a little bit in the first half, just trying to stay connected, staying in touch, staying tight in the box,” Anderson said. “In the second half, we definitely cleaned it up. We knew what to do. We just had to be locked down on defense and our offense did an amazing job scoring goals for us.”
Scoring goals the Bulldogs definitely did and McWhirter’s goal came at the perfect time as Mississippi State, riding the energy off a record attendance of 1,483 fans at MSU Soccer Field, sent those fans home happy with a third-consecutive win to open up SEC play.
The Bulldogs look to keep their unbeaten record and undefeated record in conference play alive as they travel to play Missouri next week, a team that lost to Vanderbilt, 2-0, on Sunday afternoon.
MSU has won two of its past three matches against the Tigers, most recently drawing, 1-1, in a two-overtime thriller in 2020.
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