Madie Knaggs

ECU junior midfielder Madie Knaggs.

Soccer games are usually low scoring affairs, but East Carolina University’s (5-7-2, 2-2-1 AAC) women’s soccer team fought hard in a particularly low scoring one, losing 1-0 to the University of Houston (4-11, 1-4 AAC) on Thursday night.

With this defeat, ECU falls to 5-7-2 on the season and is now 2-2-1 when playing against teams in the American Athletic Conference, while Houston now sits at 4-11 overall and 1-4 against in conference teams.

The Cougars were only able to take 12 shots on goal throughout the game as ECU’s defense continued its strong play against AAC teams. Throughout their previous for conference games ECU’s defense allowed just two goals and 50 shots on goal.

However, despite a great defensive effort the Pirate offense struggled against the Cougar defense. ECU managed to get just six shots on goal the whole game but each one was stopped by senior goalkeeper Sammy Cude.

The one goal of the game came in overtime when senior defender Nolin Packer played back deep into the Pirates’ penalty area on a corner kick and during a scramble for the ball, was able to flick a shot past redshirt junior goalkeeper Melanie Stiles for the game winning goal.

“I think all of us, including the team, are disappointed in this game,” head coach Jason Hamilton said. “We didn’t play as a team and we made it harder on ourselves than it ever should have been.”

The Pirates will have to come together soon as their next game is against a Southern Methodist University team who is 8-5-1 on the season and is looking to bounce back from a two-game losing streak.

“It’s a game of inches and you have to be very disciplined in order to have things go in your favor,” Hamilton said. “We lacked discipline significantly today and that is something we will have to address over the next couple days if we want to get a result on Sunday.”

ECU’s game against SMU will be on Sunday in Dallas, Texas. The game will be streamed on the American Digital Network with kickoff scheduled for 2 p.m.

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