Women's soccer keeps ball rolling

Another game another hat trick. Ho-hum.

What else is new for the North Carolina women's soccer team?

Junior Casey Nogueira was the latest to attain the feat for the Tar Heels and she also managed to register an assist to go along with her three goals.

She now leads the ACC with 12 goals and tops the NCAA with 29 points.

The goals proved to be much-needed insurance for the No. 2 Tar Heels who defeated No. 16 Wake Forest 4-2 for their seventh straight victory.

The hat trick was the third in four games for UNC" whose offense has been on fire. The Tar Heels have averaged 4.6 goals per game during the winning streak.

""We've got both sides serving the other side now" so what I like is the team playing unbelievably unselfish soccer  coach Anson Dorrance said. The left side is serving the right and I thought earlier in the year" the right side was doing all the playmaking for the left.""

North Carolina's offense rolled throughout" controlling possession for much of the game. UNC took 23 shots to the Demon Deacons' five.

Although Wake Forest didn't get many opportunities to score it made the most of its chances. The Demon Deacons got their only two shots of the first half by breaking through to UNC's back three" and they converted once.

""I think the reason they broke our defense down is because we didn't have a lot of compaction between our backs and our holding midfielders" Dorrance said. Without that compaction" you can't play with a 3-back against a 3-front.""

The other goal came on a well-placed header off of a corner kick that slipped past UNC keeper Ashlyn Harris.

While Wake Forest managed to be efficient with their limited shots" they simply could not muster enough of them because of UNC's ability to impose its offensive willpower.

Wake Forest keeper Laura Morse had only allowed one goal on the season coming into the match and UNC managed to multiply that total by five.

For the first goal junior Tobin Heath threaded a beautiful pass to Nogueira through the Demon Deacon defense" and Nogueira found herself all alone near the side of the goal.

""I looked up on the first goal and was like" ‘Wow I have two or three seconds before anyone closes me"'"" Nogueira said. ""So I just looked up and saw the goalie coming at me covering the near post" and as Anson has pounded into my head ‘shoot far post"' so I did and it went in.""

And after five games of near misses from a few yards outside of the top of the goal box" including a screamer off the crossbar Thursday against Duke senior Yael Averbuch finally connected her left-footed cannon shot with the back on the net.

Morse had no chance as the ball lasered past her and curved into the top right corner on the net and pushed the score to 2-0 in favor of North Carolina.

And though the shot had plenty of pace" Averbuch said she took a little bit off on it.

""I just focused on really keeping it on the frame of the goal" and with that focus it was a little less power and a little more placement" Averbuch said.

The game also turned into a physical battle between the two squads. The two teams combiend to rack up 23 fouls, and there was a brief but heated verbal exchange when it appeared Morse was hit by Allie Long. Both Morse and Long received yellow cards.

Dorrance chalked it up to the competitive nature of wanting to win the game.

Everything I saw was hard" but it was honorable. No one was trying to injure anyone" he said. I think it was great respectful play for the players on both programs and I have no issue with hard play as long as it's clean.""



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