Macy Blackburn’s done just about everything in her Texas Tech soccer career, but Friday night presented a first for the fourth-year junior.
Forced to sit out the Red Raiders‘ postseason run in 2023 with her knee injury, Blackburn got her first taste of NCAA Tournament action, and played like it was a regular-season game against any other opponent.
LSU head coach Sian Hudson said the Tigers knew about Blackburn’s prowess on the outside, and credited her ability to get from corner to corner in the blink of an eye. Texas Tech’s all-time leader in career assists added two more on Friday, setting up goals from Taylor Zdrojewski and Skylar Haase in the first half and the Red Raiders held on for the 2-1 victory at the John Walker Soccer Complex.
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“We really knew the opportunities were going to be wide,” Blackburn said,” and once we started moving it through the midfield and kind of breaking those lines and finding me and Elise (Anderson) out wide, or even attacking mids, I think that’s when we were finding our best opportunities.”
Head coach Tom Stone was away from the team throughout the week. The rest of the coaching staff, led by assistants Blair Quinn and Nick Hallam, handled the heavy lifting in his absence. Both said LSU’s physicality was something to monitor, and Stone felt like the team handled it well — even if Blackburn wound up in the LSU bench after getting decked out of bounds.
“It definitely didn’t feel good, I’m not gonna lie,” Blackburn said. “But at the same time, we kind of knew that was kind of their game.”
Blackburn made them pay, first setting up Zdrojewski for her team-leading 10th goal of the season. About 13 minutes later, it was Haase’s turn to get in on the action, perfectly heading a feed from Blackburn past LSU keeper Audur Scheving for what wound up being the game-winner.
“She didn’t have a lot of the game, but she had that moment and it was magic,” Stone said of Haase. “It was one of the best headers we’ve probably ever scored on that field. It was exactly where she wanted to put it. She looked like a pro in that moment.”
LSU scored a frantic goal 27 seconds into the second half, but the Red Raiders settled in after that, applying pressure on offense and getting a timely finger-tip save from Faith Nguyen to walk away victorious.
Much of this year’s Texas Tech team is young, the majority set to return next season. For seniors like Jillian Martinez — who played all 90 minutes on the back line — it was their final run on the Walker Soccer Complex field, a moment that Martinez made sure to cherish.
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“It was really hard to not get emotional before the game just knowing what’s going into this,” Martinez said. “… Now I’m definitely feeling it. Now I feel everything knowing that I’m not going to play here at Walker again as a collegiate player. It’s tough. I’ve made so many memories here, transferring here my sophomore year. I was young, and I think for me just being at the Walker and having that community around us was really, really positive.”
Texas Tech, the No. 8 seed in its quadrant, advances to the second round to take on Duke, the top overall seed for the entire tournament. The Blue Devils blasted Howard 8-1 in its open-round game. Now Stone will bring the Red Raiders back to where his own playing career began, the same place he became a national champion.
“I wish they weren’t as good as they are,” Stone said of Duke, “but I’m thrilled to be playing against them.”
