Texas A&M's soccer team did everything but find the back of the net on Sunday, having to settle for a scoreless draw with a resilient Texas Tech Red Raider side.
Texas A&M fired off 35 shots in the double-overtime affair at the Aggie Soccer Stadium and Tech keeper Colleen Pitts was forced to make nine saves, many of the spectacular variety.
"I've got to give Tech a lot of credit," A&M coach G. Guerrieri said. "They could have been thumped by five or six goals by a lot of Texas A&M teams, but they hung in and they hung in and the goalkeeper, that I can remember, made four big-time saves. Give them lot of credit for the grit and the determination they had to come in and get the tie."
No. 20 A&M will head into its final regular season match, a home battle against Texas on Friday, with an 11-5-2 overall mark and a 5-2-2 Big 12 record. Missouri clinched its first regular season title with a 5-0 victory over Nebraska on Sunday.
With 20-mph winds dictating the way the match was played, the Aggies peppered the Tech goal in the second half.
It started with a Nicole Ketchum header being pushed aside by Pitts for a corner kick, and then after another corner in the same sequence Katie Hamilton's header was denied at the other post by Pitts.
A few minutes later, Hamilton was again turned away by Pitts. This time the shot came off the right foot of Hamilton, who found the frame on four of her seven shots.
"Sixteen corner kicks, those are great opportunities for us to score, but again you've got to take your hat off to Tech to keep us off the scoreboard," Guerrieri said. "We outshoot them 15-3 in the second period and it just seemed inevitable that we were going to find a way to break that seal on the goal and it never really happened."
The 16 corner kicks were two shy of an A&M record for a match.
The onslaught continued when Mary Grace Schmidt almost caught Pitts too far off her line with a header from long distance that found the top of the net.
Next it was Alyssa Mautz, whose header just missed the elbow of the goal.
The Tech defense then bailed out Pitts after she drifted to the edge of the box and was unable to get back before Hamilton's pass set up Rachel Shipley. Shipley's shot was on target but was cleared away by a defender.
Mautz then had a carbon copy shot of her goal that was the game-winner in the Aggies' 2-0 victory over Colorado on Friday. This time, however, the well-struck ball from 25 yards was punched away by a diving Pitts.
In a 15-minute span, those five A&M opportunities could have decided the game.
"We're frustrated," Guerrieri said. "We get that many chances with the caliber of players we have we think we should be able to finish those things off. We scored some good goals on Friday, but Sundays have been challenges."
A&M nearly took a lead into the break despite playing the first 45 minutes against the stiff wind.
Pitts just barely got a fingertip on Kim Castleberry's 18-yard shot from a severe angle, and then the woodwork was unkind to Shipley, who pulled the ball onto her left foot and curled in a shot that beat Pitts but hit the crossbar.
After the Red Raiders (8-7-3, 3-3-3) survived the first 90 minutes, they put a scare in the Aggies twice in the 20 minutes of overtime.
Sarah Ellison broke free at the top of the penalty box after two Aggie defenders got their wires crossed. She only had Kelly Dyer to beat, but her shot went wide right.
That was against the wind, and then in the second 10 minutes, Conner Williams sent the ball above the crossbar after running onto a free kick that Dyer knocked down to the ground innocently enough but did not catch.
"In the end we were fortunate not to give up a stupid goal to lose it," Guerrieri said. "What happens is we get so many chances to score and when we don't score we feel like we have to change things and throw more numbers forward. That opens us up to counter attacks."
On the final whistle Tech celebrated earning the draw, while a dejected A&M group walked back to its bench.
"They just had a big, big, big result for them to pull a point off here, and for us we feel like we lost," said Guerrieri, whose team defeated Tech 5-0 in 2007, the last time the Red Raiders visited College Station.
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