Taylor x2: Griz sweep Big Sky soccer honors

The Montana soccer team has swept the Big Sky Conference Player of the Week honors for the second time this season.

Seniors Taylor Stoeger and Taylor Hansen were named the Offensive and Defensive Player of the Week, respectively, after the Grizzlies had a 2-0 home stand, with wins over Texas Southern and regionally ranked Boise State.

Stoeger, the MVP of last spring's Big Sky tournament, scored twice on Friday in Montana's 6-0 win over Texas Southern. Her two first-half goals sparked the Grizzlies to a 5-0 halftime lead.

This is Stoeger's first Big Sky Player of the Week honor.

Hansen, an outside back who gets farther up the field more often than most at her position, helped Montana post a pair of shutouts against the Tigers and Broncos.

The Grizzlies limited their opponents to just 12 shots over 180 minutes, only three on goal.

Hansen also got in on the action on the offensive end in Friday's lopsided victory. She assisted on Stoeger's goal in the fifth minute, then assisted on Stoeger's second goal in the 23rd minute.

She added her first goal of the season in the 37th minute, a well-placed shot from distance, to make it 4-0.

The assists gave Hansen 13 for her career and moved her into the top 10 in program history. She is currently tied for ninth with Sheralyn Fowler (1995-96).

The fifth-year senior has twice been voted first-team all-league and twice named all-region, but this is her first Big Sky Player of the Week award.

"They've been playing well this season, but now we have seniors who will do whatever it takes to win games, and I really like that," said coach Chris Citowicki.

"That's what you got from Claire (Howard) and Avery (Adams) and Lex (Coyle) and Rita (Lang) last season. Now that they're out, somebody had to step up. Taylor (Hansen) is playing all out now. She's not holding anything back, and Stoeger is hitting that level as well."

Coming off its only one-sided loss of the fall, a 3-0 setback at Gonzaga on Sept. 5, Montana bounced back in a big way on Friday, routing Texas Southern 6-0, the most goals scored by the Grizzlies since 2014.

Stoeger's first goal on Friday, which made it 1-0 before the match was five minutes old, was a header off a cross from Hansen. And it came just like the Grizzlies had been working on it all week.

With Stoeger near the far post, the Texas Southern goalkeeper moved in that direction. So Stoeger, feeling that more than seeing it, headed it toward the opposite post. The keeper had no chance.

"We spent the whole week working on heading. We've been getting crosses in the box but we hadn't worked on heading much at all, so we weren't putting some of those away the way we should have," said Citowicki.

"It was just focusing in the key moment and executing the shot exactly the way it should be. Perfect technique, perfect everything."

Stoeger's second goal came when Hansen played a ball forward that Stoeger out-ran the TSU defenders to track down. She slotted it in with the outside of her right foot from the left side of goal.

It was Stoeger's second multiple-goal match of her career, adding to the two she scored against Northern Colorado in April in the Big Sky tournament, a win that sent Montana back to the NCAA tournament.

Hansen's goal against Texas Southern at 36:54, the third of her career, came from 15 yards out. After toying with a Tiger defender, Hansen went upper left corner.

Montana followed its win over Texas Southern on Friday with a 1-0 victory over then one-loss Boise State on Sunday. It was the biggest out-of-league win for the Grizzlies in four seasons under Citowicki.

"Going through nonconference, we've seen close games with Creighton, Cal Poly and Portland, and we've played teams we should beat and we've beat them, not by one or two but handily," said Citowicki.

"Now we're picking up results against good teams. We didn't get a result early on because we couldn't close out a game. On Sunday we finally did. To learn how to close out a game against a good team is huge. This team is maturing immensely."

Montana (3-4-0) will wrap up its nonconference schedule with a match at Long Beach State (3-2-1) on Thursday night.

University of Montana Athletics

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