Florida and Kentucky Soccer Tie 1-1

GAINESVILLE, Fla. – Florida and Kentucky soccer tied 1-1 Sunday afternoon at the Donald R. Dizney Stadium.

Recent meetings between these two Southeastern Conference Eastern Division rivals have been close as this is the second consecutive 1-1 tie<https://floridagators.com/news/2022/10/16/soccer-gators-and-kentucky-tie-1-1.aspx>. Florida won in overtime in the two prior matches to the recent ties.

Both teams entered Sunday’s match looking for its first league win of 2023. Kentucky has registered a tie in each of its three SEC matches and today’s result gives Florida its first league point.

Kentucky started the day as one of the remaining 13 NCAA Division I team unbeaten in 2023 action.

This Afternoon’s Scoring:
The first Gator goal for senior transfer Emily Yaple was the only goal of the opening half. She received the ball above the box and made an angled run toward the edge of the box. Her right-footed 20-yard strike scored at the far post corner. Yaple joined the Gators this season after scoring 10 goals in her three seasons with Pittsburgh.

Kentucky tied the match in the 65th minute when Maya Lacognato put in the ball played across the face of the goal by Jordyn Rhodes.

Florida kept looking for the go-ahead goal including a header that was just high by senior defender Anna DeLeon in the 89th minute.

Hear from the Gators:
On Florida’s performance today:
“We executed our game plan really well. I gotta give a shout out to our staff because we spent a lot of time going into this game really trying to figure out how best to maximize our opportunities. I think that you saw that in our possession and kind of control of the tempo. We got away from it a little bit in the second half in some bits, but Kentucky is a good team, so you’re not going to be able to keep it for 90 minutes.

“I’m overall happy with the execution. Obviously we would love to have held them and gotten the elusive first SEC win but to get a point, we’ll take it and move forward. We’re still competing to win so we’re still looking for that win.

“I thought we did a really good job of transition when we won the ball defensively. We did a much better job today of keeping it and then maintaining possession for a while. We’ve got to still tighten up our set pieces because we’re getting too many chances to not get something out of it. Anna [DeLeon] just missed that that header in the last minute of regulation. Overall, just really happy with the effort, performance, heart, belief and execution of the game plan.” – Florida Head Coach Samantha Bohon

On her goal:
“I’m blessed to say that I’ve scored a lot of collegiate goals in my career, some that have even made SportsCenter Top 10<https://x.com/Pitt_WSOC/status/1451577690851586048?s=20> and similar goals coming from that far out into the top corner.

“But the biggest thing for me today was the overwhelming support that I got from my teammates afterwards. That’s never happened to me before. Fifteen minutes after I scored and came off the field [for halftime], I think every single girl on the team came up to me and told me how well I did, how awesome they felt for me and how awesome it was for the team. I just can’t be more grateful for having the support that we have here.” Florida senior Emily Yaple

On team’s performance today:
“We had a tough loss against Tennessee last week. Coming into this game, we changed our formation and kind of worked on a few different tactics that we knew were going to be beneficial coming into this game to give us the result that we wanted. And even though we didn’t get the result we exactly wanted, a point in the SEC is what we’ll take right now. I thought we played well. I thought we possessed it a lot better than we did against Tennessee, which is great moving forward for us.” – Florida senior Emily Yaple

Records:
Florida: 4-3-3, 0-2-1 SEC
Kentucky: 6-0-4, 0-0-3 SEC

Series Record:
Florida leads 25-5-5.

Next Up:
Florida faces its first SEC Western Division opponent Friday at Louisiana State. The Tigers (6-3-1, 1-1 SEC) plays host to Mississippi State at 7 p.m. ET tonight.<http://stats.statbroadcast.com/broadcast/?id=470504>

Louisiana State
Date: Friday, Sept. 29
Time: 7 p.m. ET
Site: LSU Soccer Stadium<https://lsusports.net/facilities/lsu-soccer-stadium/>
Stream: SEC Network +<rb.gy/aenwx>
Admission: Free

Kentucky (6-0-4, 0-0-3 SEC at Florida (4-3-3, 0-2-1 SEC)

Stadium: Donald R. Dizney Stadium (787)

Weather: 89 degrees, winds ESE at 4 mph

Goals by Period

Total

Kentucky

Florida

Scoring Summary:

No.

Time

Team

Goal Scorer