WVU Women’s Soccer takes on two Big 12 newcomers in the upcoming week in Arizona, and despite the new faces, head coach Nikki Izzo-Brown feels fairly confident with how her Mountaineers stack up in the conference.
The Mountaineers are 3-0 in conference play after Sunday’s tight home victory over Kansas. West Virginia opened the season 2-2 with back-to-back losses at Clemson and Penn State, who is now ranked No. 9 nationally, but have since rebounded, which Izzo-Brown attributes to a shared growth mindset across the team.
“I think the team did a really good job with a lot of those lessons early on with our nonconference schedule,” Izzo-Brown said. “We continue to learn from hard lessons but also learn where we’ve been very successful.”
West Virginia travels to Tempe, Arizona for the first of the two games on Thursday to play Arizona State, who is 6-1-3 overall and 1-1-1 in the conference after falling this weekend to UCF.
On Sunday, the Mountaineers will take on the 6-3-1 Arizona Wildcats in Tucson. Before conference realignment this season, WVU had never played Arizona State and has one matchup against Arizona in program history. Izzo-Brown coached WVU to a 2-0 win in the 2004 home match, but 20 years later, she is preparing her team for the challenges of being the visitor.
“That adjustment, it’s really tough,” Izzo-Brown said. “I think the biggest thing we have to deal with is that dry heat… We’re going to be on bermuda(grass)… and obviously time zone.”
Both opponents have benefitted thus far from those environmental factors this season, with neither having a loss yet at home. Arizona State is 4-0-2 at home this year, while the Wildcats are 3-0 at Murphey Field.
In efforts of minimizing the home field advantage this week, Izzo-Brown says her team is planning to lead with energy in order to get off to a strong start quickly.
“I think setting the tone is going to be really important,” Izzo-Brown said. “We’re not going to have time to wait. We don’t want to chase this game; we want to make sure we come out with a lot of energy.”
“We know that, similar to us, there’s different teams on the road and then there’s different teams at home, so we really just want to set the tone… and do everything we can to make sure we’re playing West Virginia soccer.”
Nikki Izzo-Brown and the 7-2-1 Mountaineers will bring their style of play to Arizona for the first time on Thursday against Arizona State. The game will kick off at 10 p.m.
Photo from WVU Women’s Soccer
