By Dylan Vazzano, TTU Sports Information
COOKEVILLE, Tenn. – A battle for all the marbles will take center stage Sunday afternoon in Cookeville, as the Tennessee Tech soccer team will host Morehead State in the OVC Tournament championship match in a clash of the tourney's top two seeds. Kickoff in a contest that has a bid in the NCAA Tournament up for grabs is slated to begin at 1 p.m. CT from Tech Soccer Field.
Admission is free of charge. The match will be broadcast live on ESPN+. Click here to watch. Live stats will also be available. Click here to view.
A look at No. 1 Tennessee Tech
The Golden Eagles (9-5-4) are back in a familiar spot after appearing in the OVC Tournament final a season ago, but were upended 1-0 by SIUE. Tech's second-straight spot in the title tilt was made possible thanks to a 2-0 victory over No. 8 Little Rock in Thursday's semifinal in a match that saw TTU score twice after intermission.
Katie Toney, the 2023 OVC Forward of the Year, put the purple and gold on the board with a blast into the upper left corner of the net in the 66th minute for her sixth score of the season to move within one of Yao Giada Zhou, the 2023 OVC Midfielder of the Year, for the most on the team and in the conference. A mere six minutes later, Toney assisted on a second Golden Eagle goal after feeding Tori Soutuyo out in front, before the Tech rookie peppered one home to extend TTU's edge to 2-0 in the 72nd minute. Soutuyos's score was her second of the year, while Toney picked up her league-leading seventh helper of the season, and Neve Renwick tallied her fourth assist after starting the play with a lengthy pass to Toney.
Renwick, the 2023 OVC Freshman of the Year, led all players in the semifinal contest with seven shots to up her conference-leading total to 74 attempts on the year.
Maggie Conrad needed four saves to secure her sixth shutout of the season and second in her postseason career after blanking Lindenwood in last year's 5-0 OVC Tournament semifinal triumph. Selma Askildsen, Macy Carter, Sami Cullum, Abigail Davis, Melina Hamm and Meredith Nye joined Conrad as the seven Golden Eagles to play all 90 minutes in the semis against the Trojans. Carter will head into Sunday's affair with the third-most career minutes in program history behind 6,685 minutes throughout her Tech tenure.
Bailey Taylor, a 2023 All-OVC second-teamer, who has notched five goals this season, will march into Sunday with 17 career scores, tied for the fifth-most in program history. The Powell, Tenn. native will appear in her 80th match of her career, second-most in school history.
TTU's appearance in the OVC Tournament championship match will be the program's fifth occurrence after making it all the way to the final in 1999, 2000, 2009 and 2022. Only the 2000 Golden Eagles won the title behind a 1-0 double-overtime triumph against Eastern Illinois to advance to the program's first and only NCAA Tournament.
A look at No. 2 Morehead State
The Eagles (8-5-5) held up their end of a No. 1 vs. No. 2 championship bargain after besting No. 7 SEMO 1-0 in Thursday's semifinal. Similar to Tech's tangle with Little Rock, the tilt's only scoring occurred in the second stanza thanks to a Kate Larbes go-ahead goal in the 83rd minute for her club-leading fifth score of the season. The All-OVC first teamer was assisted by freshman Hedda Ornberg and sixth-year Colleen Swift.
Ornberg and Swift have each split the pipes on four occasions this season, while Nicole Fiantaco and Erin Fite are tied for the Morehead lead with four assists apiece to rank in a tie for third in the OVC.
Defensively, goalkeeper Erin Gibbs collected her eighth clean sheet of 2023 to move into second on the MSU single-season blanking list. Overall, the sophomore out of Mesa, Ariz. is fifth in the conference in save percentage with a .768 mark and is third in goals against average at 1.07.
Morehead's semifinal victory was the club's fifth-consecutive win for the longest such streak for the program since 2011. The Eagles have allowed only one goal in the five contests, with the lone score yielded coming against Tennessee Tech on Oct. 19.
Sunday's OVC Tournament final will be the program's sixth appearance and first since 2013 in the title match. MSU won the championship in 2008, 2010 and 2013.
Inside the series
Sunday's championship showdown will mark the 29th meeting in the all-time series. The Golden Eagles currently hold a 13-11-4 advantage in the set, but were upended 2-1 in the regular-season matchup on Oct. 19 in Morehead. The two programs last met in the OVC Tournament in 2009 in a semifinal clash in Morehead, captured by Tech 2-1 in double-overtime.
Photo by Jim Dillon
