First-ever Sweet Sixteen berth on line as Alabama Soccer

Thanksgiving weekend? The Iron Bowl? Black Friday? Non-stop Christmas tunes on the radio? The beginning of rerun after rerun after rerun of The Christmas Story, Elf and Christmas Vacation on TV?

Yeah, we’re just one week away from all that. And Alabama is still playing soccer? And playing at home in Tuscaloosa no less? Yeah, such is the stuff of storybook seasons.

Alabama’s history-making 2022 women’s soccer team just keeps rolling along, probing deeper and deeper into previously unchartered waters, and doing so in remarkable, scintillating fashion. The latest punctuation mark to this unforgettable fall came last Friday night at the Alabama Soccer Stadium when Alabama (20-2-1) looked every bit a No. 1 seed and every bit the No. 2 ranked soccer team in all the land in its 9-0 bludgeoning of overmatched Jackson State in the first round of the NCAA Tournament.

Not even Deion Sanders in his prime would have been able to slow down Alabama last Friday as it notched its most lopsided victory of the season. Well, once the Tide got going anyway.

With the SEC regular season champs coming off a rare, painful 1-0 loss to South Carolina in the SEC Tournament title game five days earlier and having scored just one goal — and that off a penalty kick — in its last 160 minutes of game action, one wondered if the net was looking more and more like a tipped-over Walmart grocery cart to Bama players. Would they come out against the Tigers and play tight? Would they press? Would they grow increasingly frustrated the longer the scoring drought lingered?

A 0-0 deadlock through 14 minutes of action Friday night certainly breathed some life into those worries. But then, all of a sudden … Wham. Bam. Bama’s top goal-scorer for the season, Riley Mattingly Parker, struck first for the Tide in the 15th minute. Just one minute later Bama’s assist machine Felicia Knox served up Ashlynn Serepca for another goal. Deep breath. Now exhale slowly. There would be no monumental upset on this night. Two-zip Tide. And the rout was on.

The back-to-back scores seemed to provide the collective sigh of relief this Alabama needed at that moment. Yeah, we haven’t scored a lot lately, and, yeah, we fell a bit short of winning an SEC Tourney title. But, hey, don’t worry about us. See … we’re fine. Just fine, thank you.

After Bama’s 1-2 knockout punch, Wes Hart’s club cut loose, played a bit more freely and knocked the ball around with authority and its trademark crisp passing, just like it had done all season. The women in white began to control more and more of the possession and peppered Jackson State’s net over and over again. And the goals? They kept coming. One after the other. And if the shots weren’t finding the back of the net they were ricocheting off the posts or crossbar. And Bama’s standout keeper McKinley Crone and the Bama D? As stingy and brickwalled as ever, making sure Jackson State returned to Mississippi with a goose-egg.

It looked like the Alabama players were truly having fun out on the pitch. And they played that way. They smiled. They hugged. They danced after goals. They played with a renewed air of confidence, uncorking a few daring flicks of the foot they likely would not have even attempted had it been a 0-0 or 2-1 affair.

After a couple of pressure-packed, nerve-racking, often frustrating tussles in its two previous games down in Pensacola, last Friday’s muscle-flexing, tension-breaking, power display may have been just what this Alabama team needed as it readies for round two of the NCAAs Friday night at home against No. 8-seed Portland, which easily dispatched of Arizona State, 3-0, in its first-round match last weekend.

This next test will no doubt be a tougher one for Bama than the one they easily aced last Friday. Portland is 12-4-4 on the year, and its goalkeeper, Bre Norris, has recorded 11 shutouts this season. Interestingly, Alabama and Portland have two common opponents this season. Both played Utah, and both settled for ties with the Utes. Both also played BYU. Alabama beat BYU 3-2, while Portland lost 4-1 to last year’s national runner-up. Portland also owns a tie this season with then-No. 24 Washington and a win over then-No. 22 Pepperdine.

Only once before has an Alabama soccer team played this deep into November? And that came just last year when Alabama won its first-ever NCAA Tournament match, on the road at Clemson, and then bowed out of the tourney the following weekend in round two.

Win Friday night and this Alabama team will go where no Alabama soccer team has gone before. The Soccer Sweet Sixteen. Of course, it’s not like this Alabama team hasn’t already been doing all sorts of things no other Alabama team has done in the program’s 36-year history. Why not add one more item to the list, right?

Yep, Ralphie and his Red Ryder carbon action BB gun might have to be put on hold this year. Here in Alabama, it’s still soccer season.