Historic season for Kentucky women’s soccer ends in second round of NCAA Tournament
A historic 2024 season for the Kentucky women’s soccer program has come to an end.
UK lost to Notre Dame in the second round of the NCAA Tournament on Friday afternoon. The No. 4-seed Fighting Irish used early goals to establish a lead on their way to defeating the No. 5-seed Wildcats 3-1 in a match played in Starkville, Mississippi.
Notre Dame got a pair of goals from freshman attacker Lily Joseph, along with a score from fellow freshman Izzy Engle. UK’s lone goal came courtesy of graduate student midfielder Catherine DeRosa.
Engle scored in the fourth minute to give Notre Dame a hot start, which continued when Joseph dispatched a penalty kick in the 13th minute. DeRosa pulled a goal back for the Cats with a long-distance, left-footed strike in the 53rd minute before Notre Dame sealed the win in the 60th minute with Joseph’s second goal of the contest.
Notre Dame advances to the Sweet 16, where the Fighting Irish will face either Washington or No. 1 seed and host school Mississippi State on Sunday night.
Kentucky finishes the season with a 11-5-5 (W-L-D) record.
Third-year head coach Troy Fabiano’s UK team took a major step forward this year. For the first time since 2014, Kentucky both qualified for the national postseason and hosted a match in the NCAA Tournament.
That game — a dramatic first-round, penalty-kick shootout win against West Virginia last week — was played in front of a season-best crowd of 1,360 fans at the Wendell and Vickie Bell Soccer Complex in Lexington.
Several other historic benchmarks were achieved by the Wildcats this season.
That triumph over the Mountaineers was only Kentucky’s fifth win in the NCAA Tournament.
Kentucky’s 11 wins were the most victories by the program in a single season since 2014. The Wildcats also went undefeated at home during the 2024 season: UK recorded nine wins and four draws in 13 home matches at The Bell.
Fabiano — who received a new contract from UK in February — has put the Kentucky program on a positive trajectory for the future. In Fabiano’s first season as UK’s head coach in 2022, the Wildcats failed to win an SEC match. In 2023, Kentucky won three conference matches and scored a top-10 win at home but was left on the NCAA Tournament bubble.
This year, Kentucky again won three SEC matches, and again beat a top-10 opponent at home. But it was the Wildcats’ consistency that allowed them to earn a national seed in the NCAA Tournament for just the second time.
Friday’s result against Notre Dame brought an end to the 12th NCAA Tournament appearance in UK women’s soccer history, as well as the college careers of standout players including sixth-year goalkeeper Marz Josephson and graduate student forward Makala Woods.
This story was originally published November 22, 2024 at 5:44 PM.
