Fresh off of a home win against Notre Dame, the No. 7 North Carolina women's soccer team (12-2-3, 5-2-3 ACC) traveled to Coral Gables, where it defeated the Miami Hurricanes (4-12, 1-9 ACC), 4-0.
Despite the win, the Tar Heels finished seventh in the Atlantic Coast Conference. The team lost the sixth-place tie breaker, preventing it from reaching the ACC Championships for the first time in program history.
What happened?
While scoring was hard to come by at the game's onset, North Carolina was not afraid to shoot throughout the match. Just 3:49 into the game, Emily Murphy took the first shot of both teams, but it was blocked by Miami goalkeeper Melissa Dagenais.
First-year midfielder Emily Colton took another shot at the goal, but Dagenais refused to let it slip by. It wasn’t until several minutes later that sophomore forward and midfielder Sam Meza took a deflected shot and scored the Tar Heels’ first goal of the game at 18:42.
While neither team successfully scored a goal for the remainder of the half, North Carolina took several shots before the half was up. By halftime, UNC outshot the Hurricanes 7-0.
North Carolina entered the second half strong, attempting to score nearly as soon as it started. Nearly 10 minutes into the half, Colton scored the first goal of the period – her seventh of the season – to make the game 2-0.
Less than a minute later, first-year forward Emily Murphy scored her fifth goal of the season for the Tar Heels to expand the lead to three.
To earn North Carolina’s final goal, senior forward and midfielder Rachel Jones passed the ball to sophomore Talia Dellaperuta, who then scored her first goal of the season with less than 10 minutes remaining in the game.
