The No. 5 North Carolina women’s soccer team (8-1-2, 1-1-2 ACC) battled all day against No. 2 Virginia (10-1-1, 3-0-1 ACC) Sunday afternoon at Dorrance Field, with the game finishing with a 0-0 draw.
What happened?
The second the ball was kicked off to start the game, UNC was pushing hard to make something happen. Throughout the first half, the Tar Heels had their share of chances, but they couldn’t put the ball in the back of the net.
The first of these chances came with less than four minutes off the game clock. In her first game back from injury, first-year forward Emily Murphy had a one-on-one with a Virginia defender before taking a shot that went right to the Virginia graduate goalkeeper Laurel Ivory. Two minutes later, sophomore defender Avery Patterson’s cross to the middle was kicked out, leading to UNC’s first of three corners that would come in the next four minutes. None of these corners resulted in points and the back-and-forth first half defensive battle between the top-5 conference rivals started up.
With 16 minutes off the clock in the first half, the Tar Heel offense again made its attack on Virginia and came with a flurry of shots, the first from Murphy and a threatening rebound shot from senior forward Rachel Jones. Again, these shots were both stopped, and the score was still tied up at zero.
The rest of the first half was a defensive battle with both teams holding the offense of each other quiet. Both teams would gain a corner shot and make runs to their thirds of the field. However, the defenses of these top-5 teams would render both offenses quiet and the first half would end scoreless.
The start of the second half began the same way but nine minutes in, the North Carolina offense came alive again.
First-year forward Emily Colton was making a run down the field when she passed it to Murphy, who then passed it back for Colton to fire a shot, which barely missed going in and went off the top crossbar. Seconds later, Jones fired a shot that Ivory just barely got a touch on and forced it to not go in. Unlike the first half, the chances kept flowing for the Tar Heels.
UNC gained another corner three minutes later when Jones sent a ball in to Colton whose shot was saved by Ivory yet again. Five minutes after that, senior forward Rachael Dorwart would get her head on a cross and to create an arching ball that just missed the goal to the right. The Tar Heels didn’t lack scoring opportunities at the beginning of the second half, but Ivory was a brick wall in goal.
