Football Preview #21: 2024 SEC Football Tournament Quarterfinals – University of Texas Athletics

By: Chris Allen Brown

PENSACOLA, FL – With the regular season now in the rearview mirror, the University of Texas women’s soccer program sets its sights on another successful postseason run when the third-seeded Longhorns take on the 11th-seeded LSU Tigers at 2:00 pm CT on Tuesday, 5 November. at the Brosnaham Soccer Complex in Pensacola, Fla., in the quarterfinals of the 2024 SEC Soccer Tournament.

TELEVISION: Alex Perlman (play-by-play) and Marion Crowder (analyst) will call Tuesday’s action on the SEC Network, a show that can be streamed on the ESPN app.

SERIES HISTORY:

• Including a regular season game last month, Texas has not lost a women’s soccer game against LSU when they scored more than two goals during the game.

  • In fact, in all four of the Longhorns’ wins over the Tigers, UT scored 3 or more goals the entire game.

• Since the Longhorns’ 3-1 win at LSU in October 2024, Texas head coach Angela Kelly is now 10-5-2 all-time against LSU, a record highlighted by a seven-game winning streak while at the head of the Tennessee Volunteers.
• Texas will enter Tuesday afternoon’s game against LSU with a 4-1-1 all-time record, but none of the previous six games have occurred at a neutral site.
• Of the four matchups between Texas and LSU during the same time span as Kelly’s tenure at Tennessee, Texas and the Volunteers defeated LSU in the same season on three separate occasions: 2001, 2003 and 2006.

TOURNAMENT HISTORY:

• Tuesday afternoon’s game will mark Texas’ first contest in the SEC football postseason.

  • It will also be the Longhorns’ first conference tournament game since the 2019 season outside of the state of Texas, when the Big 12 Conference Tournament was held at Swope Soccer Village in Kansas City, Missouri.

    • Additionally, the Longhorns have never won a postseason conference tournament game outside of the state of Texas in the program’s history:

      • Kansas City, Mo. – 0-4-4
      • St. Louis, Missouri – 0-1-0

• Texas head coach Angela Kelly will take the field for the Longhorns’ contest on Tuesday with a 13-8-3 (.604) all-time record in SEC Soccer Tournament games during her tenure (2000-11) at the helm of the Tennessee Volunteers .

  • Additionally, Kelly won four (2002, 2003, 2005, 2008) SEC Tournament titles while coaching in Knoxville, Tennessee.

    • The Volunteers also made a championship appearance in 2004, but fell to third-seeded Florida 2-1 in double overtime.

  • After dropping first-round games in 2000 and 2001, respectively, Kelly’s team went on an eight-game unbeaten streak to win back-to-back tournament championships in 2002 and 2003.

• A Kelly-led team is 1-1-1 all-time against LSU during the SEC Football Tournament:

  • 2-0, W, in the first round of the 2005 tournament (November 3)
  • 1-1, T, in the semi-finals of the 2008 tournament (November 7)

    • The Volunteers advanced to the championship game after a 4-2 shootout.

  • 0-1, L, in extra time during the first round of the 2010 tournament (4 November)

HOME:

• The last time Texas and LSU met on the field – Oct. 11, 2024 in Baton Rouge – the Longhorns’ four-time all-conference selection Lexi Missimo became the program’s new leader in career goals when the Southlake native surpassed a lifelong teammate and best friend Trinity Byers (52) with goal number 53.

  • Missimo will enter Tuesday’s game as the all-time leader — among Division I women’s soccer student-athletes — with 56 career goals.

    • With four more goals, Missimo will become the first Division I student-athlete in women’s soccer to reach the 60-goal, 60-assist career milestone since Notre Dame’s Kerry Hanks (2005-08).

• A win over LSU on Tuesday would mark the first time in program history that Texas won the first postseason conference tournament game in its first attempt.

  • The Longhorns fell to Baylor 3-1 in the first round of the 1996 Big 12 Tournament, the first-ever Big 12 conference postseason game for UT.

    • Carroll Finch scored Texas’ only goal of the game at 48:19 in the November 11, 1996 contest.

• If he is named in the starting line-up for Tuesday’s game, Lauren Lapomarda will set the program record for most career games started with 92, passing Kasey Moore (2005-08) for the top spot.
• Goal from Lexi Missimo against the Tigers will be the linebacker’s sixth straight game with a goal, tying the game Trinity Byers (September 12 – September 30, 2021) for the longest streak of consecutive games with a goal.

  • Also, if Missimo either scores or gets an assist, she will become just the third student-athlete (Kelly Wilson, September 7-October 14, 2001; Trinity ByersSeptember 25 – October 30, 2022) to record a point in nine consecutive games.

• A potential clean sheet of Mia Justus on Tuesday will be the senior goaltender’s 11th of the season, tying Nicole Curry’s single-season clean sheet record set in 2017.

FOLLOW US:

• For the latest team information, follow @TexasSoccer on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram. General sports news can also be found at @TexasLonghorns on Twitter, Instagram and Facebook.