Kansas coach Nate Lie had been hoping for his team to get off to a fast start to its tournament run.
The Jayhawks did exactly that in the fourth minute of Friday night’s match at Rock Chalk Park when Caroline Castans played in a service from the left wing for Saige Wimes, whose header bounced past Cal Baptist goalie Mikayla O’Brien into the bottom right corner of the goal.
“When we get down one goal early in the game, it’s not fun at all, so being able to do that to another team, it’s just good momentum to go into the rest of the game,” Castans said.
KU was off from there, and despite an unlikely long-range goal from CBU’s Anja Jestrovic and a spirited second-half effort by the WAC champions out of Riverside, California, the Jayhawks held firm for a 3-1 victory in the opening round of the NCAA Tournament.
“It’s an interesting one because I don’t think we played our best tonight,” Lie said. “I thought we’ve been playing better of late. But to win an NCAA Tournament game and say that means that the program has moved forward, and it’s something we can be really proud of.”
Before a school-record 2,613 fans, Jillian Gregorski and Faith Johnston also scored a goal apiece and Castans equaled the all-time single-season KU record by adding a pair of assists to her tally as the Jayhawks largely controlled the pace of play throughout the match.
“It felt like the occasion that it was,” Lie said of the Rock Chalk Park record. “It made it feel very special. We really, truly appreciate it.”
In the 17th minute, KU nearly doubled its advantage when Wimes played Castans through the defense, and her cross set up Kate Langfelder to attempt a backheel shot on goal. It rolled just wide of the right post.
Soon afterward, Lexi Watts seized on a loose ball in the box after a series of attempts by teammates, took a quick touch to her left and fired across her body, but O’Brien saved it to force a corner kick, on which the Jayhawks couldn’t capitalize.
After the half crossed its midway point, KU doubled its lead and Castans picked up a second assist. The scorer was Gregorski, who trapped the ball in the box, took a move to the left to win space from Katrina Marsh and then fired it home.
The Lancers got a burst of momentum from a free-kick goal scored against the run of play. Jestrovic’s attempt from just past the midfield line took a threatening bounce into the box. Sophie Dawe couldn’t grab it and KU’s defense couldn’t prevent it from rolling all the way into the goal to make it 2-1.
Jestrovic sent another penetrating free kick into the box that required Dawe to make a save on Jessica Ramirez.
“I don’t think we settled in particularly well after we conceded,” Lie said. “I think that was our roughest stretch of the game for about 10, 15 minutes. Cal Baptist was energized.”
A corner kick soon afterward, though, went terribly wrong for the Lancers, as it resulted in a counter-attack and a give-and-go between KU’s reserve forwards Johnston and Jocelyn Herrema. Johnston ended up with the chance at a shot, with O’Brien charging forward, and she managed to put it past her for a goal, her first since the season opener.
“It was really an awesome feeling,” Johnston said. “But just celebrating with the team after really makes the moment very special.”
Lie said it might have been KU’s best goal of the season “in just how clinical it was, how professional it looked out there and if you throw in the circumstances, in that we really needed it.”
“Faith did a really good job of getting to the ball first, keeping it and then finding that simple pass, (which) is what we talk about,” Lie said. “So she found that simple pass as Jocelyn started joining her, and we’re still only probably at midfield or so … You could see that that window was open to play it back to Faith, but those windows, at this level, this time of year, close pretty quickly. She probably had margin of error of, like, one touch or less, and she played it at the right time, at the right weight.”
The Jayhawks entered the interval with a 3-1 lead having outshot CBU 9-3.
Castans sat out the start of the second half and KU lacked a certain dynamism on the wing as a result, although the Jayhawks still pushed forward repeatedly with Watts. She got on the end of a long ball and used an off-balance shot to force a save by O’Brien in the 58th minute.
CBU forward Kaylee Hauck nearly singlehandedly generated a goal for the Lancers with a long-distance run and set herself up for a shot. Dawe couldn’t reach the ball with her dive, but it hit the crossbar and bounced out.
The Lancers had another dangerous chance off a low free kick by Jestrovic, but Taylor Held’s attempt was denied by Castans.
Cal Baptist did well to clear the danger after O’Brien struggled to corral a ball in the goalmouth off the corner kick following a pair of attempts by Olivia Page.
“It wasn’t perfect, but we saw out the game for the most part on the front foot, which I appreciate,” Lie said.
No. 3 seed KU will play its next game at Duke in Durham, North Carolina, on Thursday against either No. 6 seed Louisville or unseeded Kentucky. Those two teams will do battle on Saturday afternoon. Lie has history with both from his years in Cincinnati, as they were local and faced off frequently in an offseason tournament called the Spring Cup.
“My last two years at Xavier we played Louisville,” Lie said. “Same coaching staff with Karen (Ferguson-Dayes). The coaches now at UK came from Milwaukee. Their last game they coached at Milwaukee actually was beating Xavier in the NCAA Tournament with Coach Nate on the sideline. And so I laugh at them, I say — it’s not true, but I joke around — ‘Hey, Troy (Fabiano), you can still thank me and send me my thank-you gift for helping you get this job at UK.’ So, know those programs really well.”
Kahner Sampson/Special to the Journal-World
