The Arizona soccer team closed out a four-game road swing by winning the Princeton Invitational with a convincing
4-0 victory over Penn on Saturday.
"It was nice to put in a good performance to finish four games on the road, but we also had the incentive of capturing the tournament title," said Arizona head coach Dan Tobias.
Senior midfielder Mallory Miller scored her third and fourth goals of the season for the Wildcats (3-1-1), both off assists from senior midfielder Nikki David.
Miller's first goal came at the 14:08 mark when she took a pass from David at the top of the box and placed the ball into the top left corner of the net. Her second goal came just before halftime, in the 39th minute.
At the 69:19 mark, freshman forward Gianna DeSaverio scored her first collegiate goal when she took on Quaker goalkeeper Brittany Binler one-on-one, putting it past her to make the score 3-0.
With just under three minutes remaining, sophomore defender Nicole Scheid scored on an open net off a cross from midfielder Kamaya Damwijk. The goal was Scheid's first of the season.
As effectively as the Wildcats finished their shots Saturday, the score may have been even higher. The team missed penalty shots in the first half and had one shot in each half bounce off the crossbar.
Tobias said he liked the consistent play he got from his sophomore defenders Scheid, Claire Bodiya and Kaity Heath and freshman Brianna Caceres. Although they gave up 10 shots on goal, only five of those shots forced sophomore goalkeeper McCall Smith to make a save.
"Defensively, we were compact and tight the whole game," Tobias said, "and we didn't give up chances inside the box."
The Wildcats scored six goals in the two-game tournament, a welcome sign for Tobias and his team before their two-game homestand this weekend.
This four-game set ends the longest road trip of the season for the Wildcats, who return home for their own tournament this weekend, where they will face Utah on Friday and New Mexico on Sunday.
"We hadn't put together a consistent effort," Tobias said of the games leading up to the tournament. "We certainly weren't perfect for 90 minutes (against Penn), but we did a good job."