Texas Tech Soccer vs. Weber State: Tom Stone Media Availability | Aug. 28, 2024

offensively against Utah State what was they what were they doing to give you problems and how do you tend to fix that going into the weate game you know sometimes the other team really puts you in difficult situations and you just manage it and it was not it was nothing more than that they were aggressive and Good played well but our both goals were self-inflicted wounds one was a deflection one we passed it right to their Center forward ball landed at the feet their other forward so those are both regrettable but completely fixable and so it wasn't that we got exposed um as much as we exposed ourselves for not being maybe ready for some of the intense moments and making decisions around our own box and that is definitely what we addressed this whole week what has Weaver State shown you offensively or defensively that you think the team needs to be really really prepared for we got to be prepared for everyone equally they do have a speedy player up front who can get behind people they have kept everything game really close they're very organized well coached their backline knows when to step high and when to drop off so they're just a well organized team and I think early in the season the more organized you are the better chance you have a staying in a game and I think that's why they've been tight in all their games because they know what they're doing I don't know their combination of seniors versus freshman but they play like a team that's got some older players uh and if not that's even more credit to them the coaches have done a good job getting them ready after a loss like that to Utah state is there a set of leaders on the team that you think think really holds a team accountable overall well that's that's the that's a great question yes unfortunately most of them are not on the field and so they're doing their best from the sideline to preach it and encourage and keep the standard high and communicate so what we've been asking for is hey look if these other leaders that you knew you were going to lean on this year are off they're hurt then who else is going to find their voice because there's really smart people on our team crunch um Faith um some of our upper classmen as they get as they get through Ashley Z these guys can lead they just have to step out a little bit and take the the the Reigns um Macy playing a little bit last game gave us some of that leadership on field back which we've needed uh speaking of Macy how do you plan to ease her back into the starting lineup yeah it's not up to me I literally get told before every game how many minutes she has you know we have no say in the matter which is totally fine the doctors did go to med school so we'll give them credit for knowing what they're doing um so they tell us how many minutes we've been told on this game what she's got and we're going to play her accordingly how do you feel like how do you feel like you know that someone like Ashley who's scored 35 goals in her career but hasn't found the back of the net yet how do you feel like she's kept her head and not gotten frustrated well I think it is frustrating she's driven by scoring all most forwards are we're all greedy hungry for goals we we our confidence is based on that but Ashley offers us a whole lot more than just scoring it is her Main M thing um but I've seen her go through five six game stretches before without scoring and then scored nine in a row so the one thing we know about Ashley is once she starts scoring they all go in it's like uh just a thing for her so we're not concerned we're four games in I think a few years ago she was five or six games in with no goals ended up with 10 and scored against almost every Big 12 team and those are the goals that count the most if anyone's keeping track so we're not worried about that although we're trying to be tough and push her and EDG her along but also it's not like she's not going to start and play tomorrow and have a great chance to get on track how do you kind of handle this three game home stand you know it's your last chance before conference play to kind of work out some things and how do you kind of manage these three games and maybe figure out your rotation as you get closer to Big 12 Play yeah I think that when we lost the players we lost we lost a lot of maturity we lost a lot of onfield leadership as we talked about so we've got to find that maturity from younger players better decision-making be more organized be tighter team on the field and you don't really expect that when you go through preseason you know we knew we would get Macy late but we didn't expect not to have Kylie or Sam um and those are you know arguably three of the top four players and producers on our Squad so we've had to take a couple steps back to be able to take a bunch of steps forward and that's fun from a coaching perspective because you get to dig down and start dealing with some players that you know are going to play more than they thought um and great opportunity for them the question is do they seize it and if they do then we're in good shape cuz the bench is talented it's just young and then lastly for me you know obviously you guys only for two losses last season you have two so far how do you manage again frustrations I don't know if that's the right word but how do you make sure that you know you take a loss and then you stack a couple behind it well first of all you can't go into any season saying you're going to go undefeat it that's setting a bar that's setting a standard that sets you up for failure so not losing a regular season game well losing one regular season game in the last two years um is a tough a tough standard to say okay that's our standard we're going to lose one game every two years so we just want to have good performances we just want to play well put ourselves in position to score be a shut down defensive team and along the way you find out so much about your team by taking a loss we really had not struggled in the area of worrying about losing until we got to the Big 12 tournament last year and remind ourselves What It Takes that's what we're doing right now reminding ourselves what it takes to win college games and it doesn't matter in conference at a conference you know team from Utah team from South Florida like they're all good and uh if you're not prepared you're not ready then you're not going to be you're not going to be ready at all for Big 12 good U what would you like to see from the team over the next three matches before the Big 12 qu I'd like i' like to see us just tighten the screws defensively be better defending in the 18 and also coming out of our defensive third with the ball those are two big deals and I think the other is we have to be more physical you know we had our ballet shoes on for the first 20 minutes we need to put our soccer cleats on because nothing against ballerinas they're tough as heck but boy we got to get into tackles we got to win 50/50s like are you kidding me these are intangibles that were not present for 20 minutes and then we're in a hole and then you see all the data cuz we get every stat imaginable now we won all those categories from that point on but it's too late it's two zero so we had more tackles won we had more uh 50-50s w we won more balls in the air but it was too late we were going to Hole two nothing and Manny's no dummy he knew how to close out a game their team was was smart about the second half played way more direct kept the ball at our end of the field and uh you know it's got to be a 90-minute deal it can't be oh oh we're down now we'll get tough I mean we're West Texas we're Texas Tech we have to start being tough all our Texas Tech teams play that way and and we didn't in the first 19 20 minutes the other day anything else than thanks