A little bit of barely controlled chaos lifted the Baylor soccer team to yet another season-opening win.

Utilizing a set play called “The Zoo” off a corner, freshman defender Georgia Mullins poked home a goal in the 74th minute Friday to drop Rice, 1-0, at Betty Lou Mays Field. With the tight win, Baylor jumps to 10-4-1 in season openers.

“I was happy to get a goal off of it,” Baylor coach Marci Jobson said with a smirk.

Baylor’s Lacy Quintana (left) and Lindsey Johnson keep the ball away from Rice’s Jessica Howard in the first half Friday at Betty Lou Mays Field.
Rod Aydelotte/Waco Tribune-Herald

“The other coach was like, ‘I didn’t know what to do, these girls were girls running around.’ I was like, ‘Well, I’m glad it worked because we just made it up.’ ”

The play, which Jobson is guarding for secrecy reasons, was drawn up to combat Baylor’s lack of crispness on set pieces. The Bears were last in the Big 12 in corners taken last season, and Jobson wasn’t happy with the team’s industry in those situations this year either.

So she drew up “The Zoo,” a chaotic play which worked to perfection Friday.

The teams had played to a stalemate through more than 70 minutes when Baylor earned just its second corner of the game. The Bears only earned one more, but three was all it took.

Hannah Dismuke swung her corner into “The Zoo,” a roiling mass of humanity inside the box. The ball caromed off a wall of defenders and fell to Mullins’ feet about eight yards out. She took a hard chop at the rebound and banged the one-touch volley into the far netting. The reaction time was too much for an obviously distracted keeper.

“It’s just craziness,” Mullins said. “You’re supposed to confuse people.”

It clearly worked. Not a bad opening night for the freshman defender, who said she expects scoring chances to be a tad more scarce as her playing career progresses.

Despite fairly consistent build-up play, Baylor lacked a decisive finishing touch around goal in the opening minutes. Jobson attributed that to nerves. Baylor opted not to play an exhibition this year.

Rice, on the other hand, had already played one — and the thick August air combined with the jitters of opening night played a part in the sluggish opening.

“I think for a lot of us, it was just the first game of the season, we were jittery,” Mullins said. “But we pulled it out good. We ended up playing really well.”

Indeed, the second half was a stark contrast. Rice nearly cashed in on one of its rare scoring opportunities with 35 minutes left, when Baylor keeper Courtney Seelhorst was forced into a full-stretch save, and the ball bounced back to Jessica Howard, who dumped her chance into the side netting. Seelhorst wasn’t forced into decisive action often, but she was excellent when called upon.

Baylor’s Hannah Dismuke (right) battles Rice’s Korey Taylor for possession in the first half of Friday night’s season opener at Betty Lou Mays Field.
Rod Aydelotte/Waco Tribune-Herald

After that, Baylor’s pressure was constant. Led by Lindsey Johnson’s rock-solid play out of the midfield, Rice was kept at arm’s reach for the rest of the half. The Lady Owls had one final gasp at goal with a 20-yard free kick with about eight minutes left — the only set piece Baylor gave up remotely close to the box — but the shot sailed well high.

Jobson played a total of 22 players Friday in an effort to get as many looks as possible while still keeping fresh legs for what’s sure to be a blazing hot afternoon game Sunday against McNeese State.

Jobson herself admitted to some nerves after the team looked fairly flat toward the tail end of the preseason. So the fact that Baylor stabilized in the second half and yanked a win out of a season opener, not too many complaints from Jobson’s end.

“Just great effort from a lot of players tonight,” Jobson said. “ Even kids that just played 10 minutes, those 10 minutes were valuable.”

wparchman@wacotrib.com

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