EVANSVILLE, Ind. – Missouri Valley Conference play will get underway on Sunday afternoon at 1 p.m. for the University of Evansville women's soccer team, as they will travel to Springfield, Missouri to take on the Missouri State University Bears. Sunday's match can be seen live on-line on ESPN3.
For Evansville, the Purple Aces will be trying to continue a trend of starting league play on the front foot, as UE is 14-8-4 all-time in conference openers. In fact, UE has not lost a road conference opener since dropping a 2-1 decision at Drake in 2010.
UE will enter Sunday's match at 1-3-2 overall. Sunday's match will be the fourth of a season-long five-match road trip, after the September 4 home match with Northern Kentucky was cancelled due to weather. So far, UE is 0-2-1 on the road trip, and has not yet scored away from Arad McCutchan Stadium. 2021 all-MVC forward Emily Ormson leads the UE attack with two goals so far.
Missouri State will enter Sunday's match at 3-4-1 overall after knocking off Kansas City, 1-0, last Sunday. The Bears are under the direction of first-year head coach Kirk Nelson, who served as MSU's associate head coach for the past eight seasons. Kaeli Benedict and Gracie English both have two goals this year for the Bears.
"This past week has been good for us," said UE head coach Chris Pfau. "We were able to get back to training this week, and get back to some basics of what we want to do. It also allowed us to heal up some people who had been banged up a little bit, so that has been great to have everyone back and feeling healthy.
"League play is what we have been focused on all season long. Hopefully, we can start out on the front foot tomorrow."
All-time, UE leads the series 15-10-8 over Missouri State. The Evansville-Missouri State series is the second-most played series in MVC women's soccer history.
