Campbell’s hat trick hushes the Bobcats on the road against Dayton.
It’s an Ashley Campbell world and we’re all living in it.
Dayton’s sophomore forward, who played for Canada at the U-20 FIFA Women’s World Cup, pieced together a hat trick in 12 minutes, as the Flyers beat the Bobcats 4-0.
“When you’ve got someone who’s played in a World Cup, they’re a leader automatically,” Dayton coach Mike Tucker said. “And when you play like that, it’s easy to prove.”
Campbell opened her scoring spree in the 23rd minute on a 25-yard ball into the area, which resembled a cross more than a shot, but snuck into the upper right corner of the net.
Her second goal came nine minutes later from 20 yards out, when she was able to round a Bobcats defender and fire a strike into the bottom left corner.
The Canadian-international’s third goal game in the 35th minute off a corner, when she was left all alone at the back post and comfortably volleyed the ball into the upper left-hand corner, completing her hat trick.
“She’s a great goal scorer,” coach Aaron Rodgers said. “She’s an opportunistic goal scorer and she’s going to do that. But defending her through the run of play … I thought we did a good job.”
The Bobcats started the match with the offensive rhythm and fluency of the last two weeks, but lost confidence once Campbell scored, which is a concern for Rodgers.
“We felt really good and after that fluky shot-cross goal, we just dropped our heads,” Rodgers said. “I hate when that happens but that’s something we’ve got to learn from.”
The second-year coach cited last year’s 2-0 loss in the Mid-American Conference quarterfinals to Eastern Michigan as another instance where Ohio lost confidence after going down.
“We can’t allow it to change that momentum,” Rodgers said. “We’ll learn from it and this is why we play these games.”
Ohio closed its non-conference portion of the schedule with a 3-5 record, a tad worse than 4-2-2 in 2013.
Perhaps the Bobcats have a tougher schedule — and there were two losses in double overtime — but Rodgers has said previously that the Bobcats today are better than the squad a year ago, in terms of skill and all around chemistry.
He also said it was nice to see that the players who stepped up in the loss Friday night were the freshman, which is a sign of progress for Ohio, especially if he wants his side to remain confident; which Rodgers said was lacking a year ago.
The win was the Flyers’ first in four matches, which was the longest dry-spell in Tucker’s 20 seasons with the program. Its most-recent losses before Ohio were to No. 4 Stanford and No. 24 Santa Clara, competition much stronger than any team on the Bobcats schedule.
“I knew what to expect and they gave us everything that I expected,” Rodgers said.
Dayton was one last opportunity for the Bobcats to sort out the kinks and prepare for MAC play, which begins at Chessa Field on Friday when Ohio hosts Akron. There might be a few more kinks left to fix.
@charliehatch_
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