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Film Study: Buffalo Women's Soccer tops Northern Illinois 4-1

I'm trying to get this post up before it gets too late, so I'm not going much into detail beyond the captions in the slideshow on this one.

In general, UB found similar themes throughout this energizing home win:

Kassidy Kidd at forward. By now you know that the senior moved up to the top of the formation this weekend and immediately more than doubled her career output. She might not offer the touch or finesse that Carissima Cutrona did up top, but it's apparent that Kidd has a knack for making smart and well-timed runs. I'd bet that her chemistry with Cutrona is a big part of the offense suddenly converting chances.

For what it's worth, Cutrona looks comfortable in the wider spaces and greater share of the ball she gets on the wing, too.

NIU's defense losing shape. Time and time again, Northern Illinois overreacted to the ball and didn't hold their strategy, leaving Bulls open in all sorts of space. There's not a ton of breakdown in this week's post, in part because UB just took what was given to them.

Celina Carrero and Julia Benati playing like NHL94 Jeremy Roenick. If you want the link and time tags for these highlights to watch video in real time, ask in the comments. Neither could be stopped, frequently taking on two and three defenders.

Wind. I brought this up plenty in the recap, and this post can't really do it justice, but it affected the whole game and a big part of UB's win was their handling the first half into the wind much better than Northern Illinois handled the disadvantage in the second half.

UB's free kicks. I wanted to break one of these down, because I was unhappy with how vulnerable Buffalo looked against NIU counterattacks in the second half, but on the rewatch I think Meghan Simmons attacking the loose ball or not wouldn't have made a difference given how much of a numbers advantage NIU had, and Buffalo actually got back OK. I'm still a little confused why UB's deliveries didn't send the ball over the front line of Huskie defenders, but I can believe that the wind would have taken the ball out of play if it were tried.