The last several games have shown a troubling trend for the Long Beach State women’s soccer team and head coach Mauricio Ingrassia.
The 49ers are making a habit of coming out sloppy and lethargic in the first half of games. For large portions of the first 45 minutes, LBSU has looked disorganized and exhausted, as if it were playing the second game of the doubleheader.
This isn’t something new. Winning games masked slow starts early in the season, with consecutive comeback home wins against Georgia and Denver highlighting one of their best stretches.
Now it’s catching up to them. They’re no longer able to muster enough energy to win games in the second half. They can still come back from one-goal deficits, like they did last Sunday night against UC Irvine. But every time, it’s becoming a little bit harder.
A major reason for the 49ers’ first half struggles is their brutal travel schedule. It began last month with a trip to Provo, Utah to play BYU. Just two days after the Saturday night game, they were back home playing Wake Forest. Four days later, they traveled across the country to Florida to play the University of Central Florida and Florida International.
The 49ers haven’t responded well to the Florida trip. They have gone 1-2-2 in five matches since, the low-point being a 3-0 loss to Cal Poly to start Big West Conference play.
Now, after playing four games in the last nine days, the 49ers will fly to Hawaii for a Thursday night game before returning to California to face UC Davis in Sacramento on Sunday.
It’s not just the travel that has worn down the 49ers. The 49ers entered the season with the toughest schedule among Big West opponents, with 2013 NCAA Championship third-rounder Wake Forest, Southern California, No. 21 Georgia and No. 40 Georgetown included in their non-conference schedule.
Ingrassia says the schedule is what it is, but he was visibly frustrated with other conference opponents playing softer schedules. He made a point after Sunday night’s game to let reporters know that it was only UCI’s second game in the last two weeks.
“This was two teams on different physical levels,” Ingrassia said.
This is the schedule Ingrassia chose, though. It makes sense to want to play the toughest non-conference opponents, hoping that a few good wins can secure a spot in the NCAA Tournament if they were to falter in the Big West Tournament. But the lack of recovery time between games has put a strain on his team that they haven’t been able to overcome.
Still, this isn’t a challenge Ingrassia and his players are going to back down from. Already they are looking forward to facing conference-leading Cal State Northridge in their last home game of the season.
“We got to get through that,” Ingrassia said. “That’s going to be a huge challenge for us, but I think one we’ll be excited for.”