A win is all that stands in the way of the UNM Women’s soccer team’s second consecutive Mountain West Conference title.
The Lobo soccer team takes on Texas Christian University tonight, and if victorious, the team will claim the MWC regular-season title.
Last year was the Lobos’ first conference championship in the history of the program, and junior Shelbie Luna said so to have the chance to win a second straight title shows how far the program has come.
“It just shows that we will continue to improve and hopefully we will get further in the NCAA tournament,” she said.
Junior Kelli Cornell said that it was the team’s goal from the get-go to win the conference again, so she was not too surprised to be in this situation.
“It’s been our goal from the beginning of this season (to be put in this position) and we were able to reach that goal,” Cornell said.
TCU is tied for last in the MWC with Air Force with a 1-4-0 conference record and has been outscored 12-5 in those games.
The Lobos are 3-0-2 conference record and Cornell said the team will be ready for whatever the Horned Frogs are able to dish out.
“TCU is going to throw everything at us,” she said. “It’s the last game of the season and they want to make it to the tournament.”
Last year UNM tied with the Horn Frogs, which is a testament to the team’s strength, Luna said.
“They were a good team last year, we tied them 1-1,” she said.
“But we’re going to do what makes us successful in order to come out on top.”
The Lobos have been on fire since losing to Cal-State Fullerton 3-2 in overtime on Sep. 16, the game that marked its third loss in a row.
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Arguably UNM has followed up its worst stretch of the season with its best as they have gone 6-0-2 in its past eight games, and capped it off with a 2-0 shutout of Boise State on Sunday.
While the Lobos are amid an eight-game undefeated streak that pushed their overall record to 9-4-4, the Horn Frogs have gone 2-5-1 in their last eight and have fallen to 7-9-1 overall.
Luna credits their current undefeated streak to learning from its losses earlier in the season.
“We feel like we’ve taken a lot from earlier in the season,” she said. “We played some pretty tough teams Florida State, Oregon, and Washington. We feel like we learned what works for us and basically peaked at the right time.”
Women’s soccer vs. TCU
5 p.m.
University Stadium
