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Analyzing the 2020 Oklahoma State women’s soccer schedule

The Cowgirls have two back-to-back home games and won’t play consecutive road games.

By Phillip_Slavin
Courtesy: OSU Athletics
Courtesy: OSU Athletics

Sometimes you just get lucky.

The Big 12 released their updated, conference-only soccer schedule on Tuesday, and the certainly did the defending regular season conference champs some favors.

The Cowgirls — who were picked No. 2 in the preseason coach’s poll — get the benefit of facing the rest of the teams picked to finish in the top-half of the conference all at home.

Texas Tech (No. 1), TCU (No. 3), West Virginia (No. 4), and Texas (No. 5) will all come Neal Patterson Stadium this season.

The home-and-aways for the season didn’t change from the original schedule, but it’s still a benefit to the Cowgirls. More importantly, are the dates of the games.

OSU not only gets the benefit of not having to play back-to-back road games at any point, they get back-to-back home games twice.

The only other Big 12 team that doesn’t have back-to-back road games on their schedule is West Virginia, but the Mountaineers don’t get two consecutive home games at any point.

You could argue OSU’s toughest stretch is Oct. 16-30 when the Cowgirls travel to Kansas to face the defending Big 12 tournament Jayhawks before facing Texas and Texas Tech in back-to-back weeks.

But I would argue the tougher stretch comes Sept. 25 through Oct. 9. OSU will face WVU at home — a team they beat for the first time in program history last season — before traveling to Baylor — a team that picked up a first-place vote in the preseason poll — then returning home for TCU, the team picked to finish third, who was the 2019 regular season runner-up.

Even without an NCAA title up for grabs, OSU is poised for a big season. The Cowgirls return eight players who started at least 13 games last season, including preseason first-team defender Kim Rodriguez, midfielder Grace Youchum and forward Olyvia Dowell, and add transfer goalie Emily Plotz, a two-time All-Atlantic Sun Conference performer at Stetson, to the mix as well.

OSU kicks off its season with a Bedlam showdown against Oklahoma on Friday, Sept. 11 in Norman.

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