Sept. 1, 2000
NOTRE DAME, Ind. – With her team again struggling to capitalize on its offensive chances, senior midfielder Anne Makinen scored a pair of second-half goals to secure a 2-0 victory for the Notre Dame women’s soccer team over visiting Tulsa, in non-conference action Friday night at Alumni Field.
Notre Dame (2-0-0)-ranked as high as second in the national polls-failed to score on its first 23 shots of the game before sophomore midfielder Ashley Dryer worked the ball to Makinen in the game’s 69th minute. The three-time All-American then found some space and drilled a 15-yard shot into the left corner of the net.
Makinen-who had one goal and two assists in last week’s 6-0 win over Detroit-scored an unassisted goal 12 minutes later, on a 20-yard blast from the right wing.
Tulsa (2-1-0) managed just two shots on goal, giving Notre Dame an 84-4 shot edge through two games this season (the Irish finished with 35 shots on Friday).
The young Irish squad-minus five graduated starters from the ’99 NCAA runner-up team-has yet to settle on a consistent lineup.
“Right now, we still are not resolved in terms of what our starting team is and that’s the problem,” said Irish coach Randy Waldrum, whose team played five games in Brazil during the preseason “We’re seven games into it and we’re no closer to knowing what our back four (defenders) should be. And we can’t even get veteran players to step up and be consistent enough day-to-day. So we still have some pretty important work to do before the big games next week with Santa Clara and Stanford.”
Notre Dame opens BIG EAST Conference play at home on Sunday, with a 1:00 p.m. game versus Providence.
TULSA (2-1-0) 0 0 - 0NOTRE DAME (2-0-0) 0 2 - 2
ND 1. Anne Makinen 2 (Dryer) 68:17, ND 2. Makinen 3 (-) 80:42.
Shots: TUL 2, ND 35
Saves: TUL 11 (Pam Devore), ND 2 (Elizabeth Wagner)
Corner Kicks: TUL 0, ND 15
Fouls: TUL 11, ND 16
Offside: TUL 0, ND 2
MORE COMMENTS FROM WALDRUM: “We had a horrible week of training this week and we are too young to have a bad week of training. For the second time this season, we put up big shot numbers and we only have two goals to show for it. It’s just not a good situation to miss that many chances. … Anne had a goal and two assists last week and had the two goals today. But even with that, she can still do more and she’s going to have to get more in tune with how we are going to play and one of the things we do is we’re trying to press forward a little bit because we are a little more athletic and we’ve got to get everybody to buy into that. Fortunately, we have a player like Anne that can break a game like this but we need to be able to count on other players as well.”