“We just had a four bad minutes of soccer,” junior forward Elyse Bennett said.

The nation’s longest non-conference winning streak in women’s college soccer came to an end last night for the #13 ranked WSU soccer team (4-1-0) against the University of Michigan Wolverines (5-2-0) in a tough 2-1 loss Friday night on the Lower Soccer Field.

This was the first time WSU has lost in 16 matches in a non-conference play and their first home loss in non-conference in over three years since BYU in 2016.

 In the teams’ first match up in history, shot after shot and save after save, Michigan’s junior goalkeeper Hillary Beall did not back down as she finished the match with a career-high 12 saves. Beall more than doubled her 2019 season saves in just one game that night in Pullman.

 Head coach Todd Schulenberger said the Cougars should not have lost the game.

 “It was just a bad start…very unfortunate and very unlike the Cougs,” Schulenberger said.

 The Chicanx Latinz Student Center hosted and celebrated Latin Heritage night with a stand full of fans. They were ready for an intense match, bit the usually aggressive cougars were not on their game.

 Washington State made two mistakes in the first four minutes of the match.

 Wolverines junior midfielder Sarah Stratigakis chipped an early goal over graduate goalkeeper Ella Dederick, just before the two minute mark to put the Wolverines on the board 1-0.

 Only a minute later, Michigan’s junior midfielder Nicki Hernandez crossed the ball as sophomore midfielder Meredith Haakenson found the back of the net for another early goal for the Wolverines leading 2-0.

With 20 shots on goal and 10 on target later, the Cougars finally got one in the back of the net in the 71st minute.

 Senior forward Morgan Weaver scored her fourth goal of the season by capitalizing on a long throw from sophomore midfielder Elaily Hernadez-Repre. The ball just skimmed the tip of Beall’s glove to get the Cougars on the board 1-2.

 The goal put Weaver in the team lead with four goals in five matches.

 In the 84th minute, Elyse Bennett just missed the back of the net hitting the crossbar as Beall had her 11th save of the night.

  Looking forward to the next game senior Morgan Weaver said her team is just going to look at the positives.

 “I mean they were winning 2-0 and we ended up getting a goal which was a positive there and we fought till the end,” Weaver said. 

 Her team is going to forget about the negatives and flush this game tonight. They hope to come back on Sunday and beat LMU, she said.

 As a coach, one of his greatest takeaways from a game like this is to be prepared for what happens next in their match on Sunday, Shulenberger said.

 “It is a shining moment to see what’s going to happen for this team because it’s going to come a lot from what’s going to happen on Sunday,” said Shulenberger.