One Match After Recording A Hat Trick, Striker Ashleigh Williams Recorded Her Third Straight Multiple Goal Game

LUBBOCK, TX (Press Release) - Thanks to another double from junior Ashley Williams, the Texas Tech Red Raiders cruised to a 3-0 win over Utah State on Sunday afternoon at the John Walker Soccer Complex.

The match was originally scheduled for 7pm under floodlights, but due to the weather, the match was moved to the afternoon.

Texas Tech (3-0-1) was unstoppable in the early going and got off to a good start as sophomore Kyle Bahr hit a shot down the left sideline.

With Utah State (1-3) in the game's first minute, Bahr drove into the penalty area and sent a perfect shot that hit the wide Williams team. The youngster hit the ball into the net and scored his sixth goal of the season.

Her goal just 71 seconds into the game gave Tech a 1-0 lead.

Sunday's game ended in a 1-0 tie until substitute Caitlin Giametta started a strong winning streak. 3 minutes into the game, Giametta deflected a corner kick by USAF goalkeeper Dera Walton.

Newcomer Sam Cortright served up the ball as Hannah Anderson headed into the penalty area after the ball went wide again for a corner.

Andersen headed the ball back to Williams, who put the ball back for his fifth goal of the afternoon, his fifth of the week and his seventh of the season.

He leads the nation with seven goals on matchday.

Tech went into halftime down two goals and led 2-0 in the final ten minutes before going into halftime.

Utah's Ryan Jonah made a save on Madison White's first goal for the Aggies, and the Red Raiders answered the threat with a quick third goal.

As he has done all season, Massey's perfect run down the right flank troubled Blackburn. Defender Alex Kern found the ball wide open and made a perfect save. Kerr tries a cross from the back which is denied by the Agios defenders.

But the spotlight fell squarely on Gisele Kozarski, who scored Walton's first goal.

Kozarski's goal gave the Red Raiders a 3-0 lead after 28 minutes.

In the final third of the game, Tech took control and Utah State managed only one shot (88th minute).

The win snapped Tech's undefeated streak this season and extended an eight-game unbeaten streak into Thursday's game against UNT. The Red Raiders are now 4-0 in their last four home games of the 2022 season and still have to fall behind in 2023.

As usual in her career, goalkeeper Madison White was strong in the win, posting her 28th career clean sheet, just shy of the Victoria Eagles' program record. Tech's sixth guard, who has 200 career saves, made three saves.

With two goals this afternoon, Williams scored his 23rd and 24th career goals, moving the Allen native into seventh all-time on Tech's all-time leaderboard. With his four points today, Williams became the tenth Red Raider to score 50 points in his career.

As mentioned earlier, Williams has scored seven goals in four games this season and has scored 16 goals in the last 14 games.

Coach Tom Stone:

"I thought our girls handled the time change really well. I think they were happy to be in the building. They didn't want to wait all day to play. So I think we did a good job of that. I thought we were. They're excited and ready to go." On Sunday games, 1pm, that's it. Indirectly this has been a good result for us. We won, we had to play in hot and difficult conditions and the girls were satisfied after the victory on Sunday.

About Ashley Williams:

“For him, it's just progress from senior year [of high school], freshman year of college, sophomore year to senior year. This is a true test of whether a college athlete can improve each year because it's easy to tell when it will. Start and who is going to play with me. Because last year I scored nine goals. So he could have brought the same player that he had last year, but he didn't. He wanted to know more and came to ask more questions. Physically he's good so let's see how he can improve. The problem is that Ashley is physically very strong and if he gets into certain areas and when he gets up to speed, it takes a lot of defensive play to stop him from finishing crosses. So we're happy. Because he did it the old fashioned way. He got his success and worked hard. We hope it continues this way.

This year's teams' ability to win in a draw:-

I think it's the maturity of a lot of our upperclassmen. "From the beginning, they were saying, 'Guys, we played a lot of games last year. Our attitude was that we could turn any of them into a W. That's what we lost last year. We were ahead in every game. You're happy with that, but we were. The dominant team in all those games and we said we can't do that this year. We'll definitely have someone else. It's a 20-game season but it's a good, tough draw and hopefully not what happened last year. But at the same time we We're not a team. We've got seven freshmen, we've got those other freshmen, we've got Macy Blackburn again, we've got three 5th graders. We're not last year's team. Every team is a new journey, and every season is different. It's easy to say, 'We'll do it again,' but if you're going to do it again, you have to. It's different, it's never going to be the same. I like the identity of this team, it's growing and we'll see if we can continue that as the season goes on."

It is the following.

The Red Raiders continue their five-game homestand Thursday night when North Texas travels to the John Walker Soccer Complex. Code Red's first match is scheduled to begin at 7 p.m.

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Rashid Khan's brilliant hat-trick! 🤩