After an impressive victory over the LSU Lady Tigers on Friday night, the Tennessee women’s soccer team came into Sunday night’s game against in-state rival Vanderbilt hoping to gain some momentum before they went on the road to face the nationally ranked Florida Gators.
Vanderbilt sophomore forward Simone Charley had other plans in mind.
Charley scored goals in the 36th and 53rd minute to give the Lady Commodores a 2-0 victory over Tennessee on a chilly Sunday night at Regal Soccer Stadium.
“There are couple different ways that we could look at (the game),” Tennessee head coach Brian Pensky said. “In terms of one player being the difference in the game and that is Simone Charley, or we could look at it and really ask ourselves, ‘were we totally fired up and on point tonight in our urgency?’ And I think we were decent.
“Were we good enough? Maybe not.”
Charley scored both of her goals on Vanderbilt counter attacks.
“You get a kid like Simone, who, you know, when she does have a little bit of a chance she wants to come down at the heart of you,” Pensky said. “And certainly she did that twice against us.”
Charley scored her first goal after she managed to get past Tennessee defender Gabby Santorio, who tried to foul Charley on the play. The officials let the players play on, and Charley escaped the grasp of Santorio before sending a ball flying past goalkeeper Jaime Simmons.
The Lady Vols (7-8-1, 2-5-1 SEC) responded with a nice attack of their own towards the end of the first half after the Vanderbilt goal, which ended in a Hannah Wilkinson header hitting the left post.
It was Wilkinson’s first game action since she went down with a knee injury against Alabama on Sept. 26. The senior forward saw minutes in both halves and wore a brace on her right leg the whole game.
Coach Pensky had nothing to say but praise when discussing the resilience and play of Wilkinson.
“If you asked me at noon today what Hannah’s prognosis was for tonight, I would say I don’t think she is going to play,” Pensky said. “She has been in a good place, but then she was feeling a little sore yesterday. But she came out tonight and had a great warm-up, and felt good and her knee felt fine.
“I thought she did well. We put her on the left side to protect her right leg a little bit. She created two or three corners, got some great serves in and almost got on the end of a couple of corner kicks.”
The Lady Vols strung together a couple of nice attacks at the beginning of the second half, but one of the attacks led to a Vanderbilt counter attack where Charlie scored the insurance goal for the Lady Commodores.
Vanderbilt (7-8-1, 2-5-1) then primarily played defense for the rest of the game, trying to protect their 2-0 lead. While Tennessee hit the post and fired shots at the goal, it failed to produce a goal in the second half.
The Lady Vols must rebound quickly since they travel to Gainesville, Flordia, on Friday to play the nationally ranked Gators.
