Welcome back to the Michigan Insider here on the Big 1050 WTKA online at the big 1050.com. And it's time for our weekly check-in with Michigan women's soccer coach, Jen Klein. And coach, welcome back to the show. How are you? I'm doing great. Yeah. First weekend of the Big Ten is complete and excited for a couple of home games over the weekend with our California school visiting Ann Arbor, so really looking

forward to it.

It was an exciting week on the pitch, both on the men's and women's side.

I'm focusing, of course, with your squad.

You went down on Friday to face your arch rival, number 22 Ohio State, and Jen, this is

one of those games that is not for the faint of heart.

There were opportunities left and right on both sides. You had clean sheets for both goalkeepers, and you end up in a zero-zero-zero tie against Ohio State down in Columbus. What a game. Yeah, what a game. I mean, honestly, like, it was, if you were a fan there, you definitely got your money's worth in terms of the two opponents going back and forth with each other,

especially in the last five minutes of the game. Definitely an exciting one. But a point on the road at Ohio State for us was huge,

and it definitely built some confidence going into our next collection of games. Yeah, no question. It's a great way to start Big Ten play. So let's start with the fact that it was zero. So let's shout out Sophie, but it wasn't just Sophie Holman. She had great help from her defenders, Ellie Fife, Campbell, Jewel, Lily Bosley, Vicki, Stella Tapia, Ania League, and of course the players in front of them as well, your back end was phenomenal.

Yeah, absolutely.

I mean, they played, you know, from the very start to the very end, everything that they had, just their work rate, their ability to just battle through.

Sophie definitely, especially at the Taylor end of the game, came up huge with some

massive saves, which is great for her and the confidence that she had. And, you know, definitely

felt really good about our defensive performance. And, you know, that's now two games in a row

for us not giving up a goal. And again, it's trending in the right direction. What does it do to a defense? You guys were very successful shutting him down, but what does it do to a defense, generally speaking, or if you're on the offensive side and you're able to do this to an opponent, when you out corner kick, attempt them 12 to 2? I know in this case, it shows how great your defense was, but when you're maybe on the other side of it, what can you do to another team to try to take advantage of it? So when you guys down the road during the season, you flip the script and have more corners against, how does that stress the other defense when you continue to have corners against you? Yeah, just put them under pressure. I mean, if you put it in the terms of, you know, kind of football,

like you leave the defense on the field for longer periods of time and when you have to make

the defense stay on the field for that long, like eventually, you know, like you hope that

it breaks and you're able to score a point. So when, you know, and for us to be able to withstand

that and not break is something that's massively, you know, important and just shows the kind of the mental fortitude, the focus, the intensity, just the discipline.

So it definitely, again, builds confidence.

But it's a pressure situation and, you know, it's just at play and it's something that,

you know, is definite really, really challenging and hard to do. But we were able to withstand.

...