Falcons Beat EMU To End Regular Season On High Note

Thursday, October 29

Ypsilanti, Mich.

3:00 p.m.

Bowling Green State University

3-8-07-11-1; MAC

Eastern Michigan

2-7-25-11-3; MAC

Team	1	2	Final F
Bowling Green	1	1	2
Eastern Michigan	0	1	1

October 29, 2015 | Women's Soccer

Box Score

By: by Alexx Klein, BGSU Athletic Communications

Boxscore (PDF)
Boxscore (HTML)
Season Stats (PDF)
Season Stats (HTML)

Ypsilanti, Mich. – The Bowling Green State University women's soccer team finished the 2015 regular season with a victory, defeating Eastern Michigan on Thursday afternoon 2-1. Sophomore Skylar Fleak and redshirt freshman Erica Hubert each scored a goal in the conference win, while freshman Juli Knapp recorded both assists of the game, for a team-high five on the season.

Fleak scored in the 20th minute of play, and Hubert added her goal in the 64th minute just three minutes after EMU's lone goal of the match.

"I'm really proud of our mentality," said head coach Lindsay Basalyga. "We said to them after the game that we had a choice if we chose to compete or not, and they made the choice to compete. Unfortunately, we didn't see our season going like this at the beginning of the year with how we started the season, but the fact that we're fighting for an unknown in the future is a credit to who we are and where we are at in our process."

The Falcons finish the regular season 7-11-1 overall and 3-8-0 in the conference with the win, and the Eagles fell to 5-11-3 overall and 2-7-2 in the MAC with the loss. The last time BGSU recorded a seven-win season was seven seasons ago when the Falcons finished 12-6-4 in 2008.

Eastern Michigan pressured the Falcon defense early and had a scoring opportunity in the 13th minute on a free kick, but the attempt hit the cross bar and bounced out. Bowling Green countered with a shot in the 17th minute, but Hubert's ball off a Knapp cornerkick was blocked by an Eagle defender. Three minutes later, Knapp put another corner into play, this time finding Fleak who's shot from the center of the box found the back of the EMU net for a 1-0 lead in the 20th minute. The goal was Fleak's fifth of the season, tying her with Mikaela Couch for second-most on the team.

This was the first Falcon lead in a match since the Orange and Brown were up 1-0 at Kent State on Sept. 16.

A strong defensive effort led by Bowling Green goalkeeper Lauren Cadel, saw 10 EMU shots in the opening 15 minutes of play, but gave up no goals to take a 1-0 lead into halftime. The Eagles attempted 16 shots to the Falcons' six in the opening 45-minute period.

In the 51st minute, an EMU players attempted a straight-on shot at Cadel from 18 yards out, but the redshirt junior corralled it in front of the goal to keep the Falcons up 1-0. However, 10 minutes later, the Eagles got on the board to tie the game at one a piece.

Eastern Michigan quickly looked to build upon its lead a minute later, but Cadel made a great stop on an EMU shot from the right side of the box to keep the score 1-1.

Determined to finish the regular season on a positive note, the Falcons kept fighting. In the 64th minute, Knapp took the ball from an EMU player, passing it up the field to Hubert. Hubert dribbled past the Eagle defense and fired off what turned out to be the go-ahead goal from just inside the box for her team-high eighth goal of the season.

With just over 20 minutes to play and up one score, Cadel was tested yet again by the Eastern Michigan attack. In the 69th minute, an EMU header hit off the left post. Although Cadel appeared to get a hand on the ball before it went out of bounds, the Falcons were awarded a goal kick on the ensuing play.

For the remainder of the game, the Eagles continued to pressure as they looked for the equalizer, but weren't able to get anything past Cadel and the Falcon back line. Cadel finished the match with eight total saves.

Bowling Green was just the fourth team this season to score more than one goal against EMU goalkeeper Kaylin Williams.

The Eagles tallied a season-high 31 shots, while the Falcons recorded nine. Hubert led the way for the Falcons with five shots. Fleak added two and Madison Schupbach and Paige Amodio tallied one each.

This was the first road win for BGSU since Sept. 11 at Eastern Illinois when the Orange and Brown defeated the Panthers 3-2.

"It feels amazing," said senior Haley Parkinson. "I can't really put words to it. With the process and the grind that I've gone through the last four years … to just be rewarded with the win is amazing. I'm speechless."