No. 6-seeded women’s soccer squares off with No. 3 OLLU in RRAC Quarterfinals

It's tough to break the Texas A&M University-Victoria women's soccer team's focus this week.

The Jaguars (8-4-5) are in the Red River Athletic Conference tournament for the fourth time in the last five seasons. They enter the tournament as the No. 6 seed and face Our Lady of the Lake in San Antonio at 1 p.m. on Thursday.

The team's laser-focus comes from an understanding of the win-or-go-home nature of the postseason.

"We're just incredibly focused," said head coach Kimberly Uetrecht. "We understand the postseason is a season of its own and we want to put our best foot forward. I can't emphasize enough how focused we are on doing our very best and putting everything we have into this game."

A&M-Victoria is coming off a 2-1 win over North American to close out the regular season.

In that match, the Jaguars out-shot the Stallions 24-9 with 15 of those 24 going on goal. Briana Ortega and Ayloni Garcia were the goalscorers for A&M-Victoria.

Garcia became the joint-leader for single-season goals (14) and points (31) after converting a penalty in the 57^th minute on Saturday. The McAllen native leads the team in shots with 58, including 24 over the last seven matches.

"We're having fun creating scoring chances," Uetrecht said. "I know we were in a bit of a dry spell in terms of putting the ball in the back of the net. But we've definitely been having fun in games like NAU to create chances, having fun practicing it in preparation for games and getting really, really focused on doing what we want to do and executing. And that would be to create chances."

The Jaguars are well-aware of the stout defense from OLLU (11-4-2) after being limited to five shots in a home loss on Oct. 27. The Saints are third in the RRAC defensively with a 1.12 Goals Allowed Average.

A&M-Victoria ranks fourth defensively with a 1.29 GAA and junior goalkeeper Jamie Noriega leads the conference in save percentage with an .823 clip. Noriega is also third in the conference in GAA with a 1.15.

But the Jaguars understand they need to create and capitalize on their chances, and replicate their team performance against NAU to avenge the loss in the previous meeting with the Saints.

"We've gone through adversity and then bounce back to show that our potential is there," Uetrecht said. "I think we're one of the strongest teams and rebounding against NAU was to prove to themselves they're one of the strong teams in the conference."