STARKVILLE — There was plenty of football happening across Mississippi on Friday night, but perhaps the most entertaining matchup occurred at the MSU Soccer Field.
For the second year in a row, Mississippi State upset the top-ranked team in the country at home thanks to the left foot of Ally Perry. The captain scored twice in the final 15 minutes of play to secure a 3-2 win over Tennessee, kicking off SEC play in dramatic fashion.
It was a battle from start to finish, but the Bulldogs proved to themselves, to Tennessee, and to everyone watching that they’re capable of playing with and beating some of the best in the country.
“This is an awesome game for us,” head coach Nick Zimmerman said. “We want to keep the ball, we didn’t dominate it like we have in the past, and it’s tough. You have to be brave. There wasn’t anything tactical; it was us playing our game. We do the things that we’re capable of doing, score a really good first goal and it opens up other things for us.”
The Bulldogs, 6-1, were reeling after an hour played in Starkville on Friday night. The visitors, No. 1-ranked Tennessee, had taken a 2-1 lead through Anaiyah Robinson, who scored two goals in three minutes to turn the game on its head.
To that point, the Bulldogs weren’t quite in control of the match as they normally are, but they were composed. They found the net with a team goal finished off by Zoe Main and took a 1-0 lead into the break. Suddenly, two giveaways had erased the first-half advantage.
Enter Perry, the team’s leading goalscorer in 2024 and team captain, leading from the front. She pulled the strings for the first goal with a pinpoint through ball, but in the 74th minute, she kept the ball herself, cutting onto her favored left foot and firing a fearsome shot into the postage stamp corner of the goal.
Game on.
“We met with her this week and kind of challenged her with some film, like how can we get you into some dangerous spots. We know that she wants to score goals, we know that she wants to create, and again, it’s an individual effort, and an absolute missile. As soon as she takes that touch and hits it, we’re like it’s in.”
The goal didn’t just spark something in the team, it sparked something in Perry. She took two more efforts from range after that, and though she missed, there was a real sense of danger when she got on the ball. It only took one more setup from Adia Symmonds in the final minute to tee her up again, and again she delivered with a thunderous strike to win the game.
“For me personally, that was my first goal in the run of play. I really wanted and needed that momentum for myself with the new season. I needed that to spark my rhythm again.”
Perry was a force the entire second half, whether it was attacking or defending. She made chase-down tackles, she was the facilitator when going forward, and she even took a tactical foul or two when they needed to slow down the Vols. She challenged herself in the offseason to become more of a leader, and it showed up on Friday in a big way, whether it was by action or by settling the team with her words.
“I was just saying to focus on the details and the principles,” she said. “I feel like we started to let that slip and that’s bound to cause errors, so I was saying effort, principles, we’ll be fine. We needed to do those little things so we could do the bigger things.”
The SEC season is only just getting started for the Bulldogs, who will travel to Texas for their next match on Thursday. The next home match will be the following Sunday against Auburn and former head coach James Armstrong.
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