AUSTIN, Texas — No. 6 BYU women’s soccer advanced to the Sprouts Farmers Market Big 12 Championship after blanking UCF 4-1 Wednesday evening at Mike A. Myers Stadium.
“It means a lot to make it to the championship match our first year in the tournament,” said head coach Jennifer Rockwood. “It says a lot about these girls and our seniors leading this group. We played a phenomenal first half, and got to get a lot of our younger girls into the game in the second half, so it was an overall great performance tonight.”
The Cougars outshot the Knights 29-14, putting eight on frame and four in the back of the net. BYU also added 11 corner kicks to UCF’s five.
Senior midfielder Olivia Wade-Katoa scored back-to-back goals in a six-minute span to start the scoring for the Cougars.
Senior Brecken Mozingo tallied a goal and an assist in tonight’s match. She now leads the Cougars in assists with 12.
Mozingo has now notched back-to-back seasons with 10 or more goals and assists, as she tallied 12 goals and 10 assists in the 2022 season.
Ellie Walbruch tallied her 10th goal of the season in tonight’s match, her seventh in the last 10 games.
Olivia Smith-Griffitts, Zoe Jacobs, Erin Bailey and Rachel McCarthy also added assists in tonight’s matchup against the Knights.
The Cougars now have five girls with 10 goals each, namely Wade-Katoa, Mozingo, Walbruch, Erin Bailey and Allie Fryer.
First Half
BYU’s offense started the game with a lot of pressure on UCF’s backline, with two shots and three corner kicks in the first 10 minutes of play.
UCF made a run down the spine of the field in the 20th minute and fired off its first on-target shot of the night to the bottom left corner of the goal, forcing freshman Lynette Hernaez to make a diving save.
In the 28th minute, Smith-Griffitts beat her defender on the right side of the pitch to send a cross into the box. With a one-touch shot that chipped the UCF keeper, Wade-Katoa put the Cougars up, 1-0.
Just six minutes later, Mozingo drove inside the 18-yard box, beating two defenders and finding the feet of Wade-Katoa who turned her defender and scored BYU’s second goal of the night.
As the Cougars maintained possession of the ball in their attacking half, Jacobs sent a through ball up the right side of the pitch in the 39th minute to Mozingo, who fired off a left-footed shot, extending BYU’s lead, 3-0.
In the 44th minute, Bailey split two defenders with a pass to McCarthy, who sent the ball in the air to the far-side of the box, finding the head of Walbruch with a ball bouncing over the keeper’s hands, extending the lead to 4-0 heading into halftime.
The Cougars outshot the Knights 14-4, with five being on frame. BYU also tallied six corner kicks compared to UCF’s two.