HARTSVILLE, S.C. – The Lady Railsplitters (6-6, 1-5 SAC) will make the longest South Atlantic Conference trip of the season on Saturday when they venture to Hartsville, S.C. to face the Coker Cobras (1-8-1, 0-6 SAC) at 4:30 at the Coker Athletic Field. Lincoln Memorial heads into Saturday's match on six days of rest after its midweek game against Glenville State was cancelled, while Coker suffered its seventh straight loss on Sunday at Tusculum.
The Basics
Saturday, October 14 at Coker – 4:30 p.m.
Live Stats
Video
Twitter
Quick Hits
- The Lady Railsplitters were scheduled to host the first-year Glenville State Pioneers on Tuesday at the LMU Soccer Complex, but that match was cancelled due to unplayable field conditions and heavy rain in the forecast.
- Lincoln Memorial picked up its first South Atlantic Conference win of the season with a gritty 1-0 triumph over the Newberry Wolves last Saturday at the LMU Soccer Complex.
Mariana Diaz scored off a beauty of a cross from
Patricia Roach in the 10th minute, while
Brooke Taylor matched a career-high mark with nine saves to post her second clean sheet of the season. The win snapped a five-game SAC losing streak to put the Lady Railsplitters in a tie for eighth in the league.
- Diaz's game-winning strike against Newberry gave the Knoxville, Tennessee native her third goal of the season to match
Melissa Carpenter and
Caroline Souza for the team lead. It also ended a nine-game scoreless streak for Diaz, who also tied Carpenter and Souza for the team lead with seven points.
- With two more wins, the Lady Railsplitters would match the program's combined win total from the past two seasons. The 2016 team won three matches, while the 2015 finished 5-9-3. If LMU wins four of its last five games, it would produce the program's first 10-win season since 2013.
- Injuries have riddled the 2017 season. Starting defender
Gabby Garcia and forward
Caroline Souza are both out for the season due to injury, while Diaz and Roach exited last Saturday's match with injuries.
- The Lady Railsplitters are trying to piece together back-to-back SAC wins for the first time since the 2014 team beat Anderson and Tusculum in succession in late October.
Know the Opponent
- Coker has not won a match since pulling out a 2-0 win over Shaw on September 9. Since then, the Cobras have lost seven straight matches and been outscored 21-1. Coker's last goal came in the third minute of its 2-1 double-overtime loss to Francis Marion on September 16, putting the team on a nearly 550-minute scoring drought.
- The Cobras were blown out at Tusculum on Sunday, 6-0. The Pioneers scored three goals in each half and outshot Coker 22-3, including a 12-2 edge in shots on goal. No Coker player finished with more than a single shot attempt.
- Coker ranks either last or second-to-last in the SAC in shots, goals scored, shot percentage, shots per game, shots on goal and assists. The Cobras are the only team that has yet to score a goal in league play this season.
- Grayson Chappell, Phoebie Eshen and Ashley Hogg have a goal apiece for the Cobras. Eshen leads the team with 14 shots, while all 10 of Hogg's shots have landed on goal. Lexi Garcia and Gaby Sturla both have an assist to lead the team.
- Freshman goalie Samantha Hoffman has started seven of the team's nine matches, but junior Shelby Middleton made the most recent start for the Cobras. Neither has fared very well this season. Hoffman has allowed 2.09 goals per game on a .784 save percentage with a SAC-leading 69 saves. Middleton has conceded 4.76 goals per game and stopped just 53.8 percent of the shots she's faced.
- Coker has been outshot 190-75 by its opponents this season.
- Saturday represents the eighth home match of the season for the Cobras. Coker is 1-5-1 at home, including that 2-0 victory over Shaw and a 0-0 draw against Converse.
Head-to-Head
The Lady Railsplitters are 3-1 all-time against Coker with a 2-0 mark on the road in the series.
Melissa Carpenter scored in double overtime to lead Lincoln Memorial to a 2-1 win over the Cobras in last season's meeting at the LMU Soccer Complex. In 2015, LMU bludgeoned the Cobras 4-1 in Hartsville courtesy of a goal and two assists from
Caroline Souza. The Lady Railsplitters also stomped Coker 5-0 in the programs' first-ever match in 2013. Coker captured its only win in the series in 2014, winning 1-0 in Harrogate.
