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The Hawaii women’s soccer team "played small" on Friday night in a 1-0 loss at UC Santa Barbara, dropping the Rainbow Wahine further down in the Big West Conference race.
Coach Michele Nagamine chalked up the loss to a significant size advantage by the Gauchos at almost every position — and shortcomings by her team in overcoming that.
"When you play big, that’s a whole ‘nother story, but tonight we had too many people playing small," Nagamine said.
UH (6-7-2, 1-3 BWC) gave up the deciding goal in the 49th minute to UCSB’s Erin Ortega and fell to 1-6 away from home this season. The Rainbow Wahine have dropped 18 of their past 20 mainland matches.
UCSB (4-9-2 overall) picked up its first BWC win of the season. The Gauchos outshot the Wahine 10-1 in the first half and 17-8 for the match.
"We can coulda, shoulda, woulda ourselves to death, but they put it in and we didn’t," Nagamine said. "I’m just kind of burning up inside because we didn’t have some individual performances that we needed to have."
It was the fourth time UH was shut out this season, and the second straight. The Wahine have lost six of their past seven matches.
Things don’t get easier — up next is league leader Cal Poly (4-0-1 BWC) at 9 a.m. on Sunday.
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