Rebels advance in MWC tourney

Victoria Sun

Thursday, Nov. 8, 2001 | 11:07 a.m.

UNLV senior midfielder Anita Pedford wanted to remain in the game as much as her teammates needed her to give them a legitimate scoring threat.

At the 60 minute mark, Pedford tweaked her right ankle while going for the ball and was taken out of UNLV's first round game of the Mountain West Conference Soccer Championship against Wyoming Wednesday night at Peter Johann Memorial Field.

Nevertheless, the Lady Rebels clung to a 1-0 lead and fought off the Cowgirls to earn their first postseason win in school history by not allowing Wyoming any shots in the second half.

"I like the fact that we were so solid defensively," UNLV coach Dan Abdalla said. "I like the number of opportunities we created for ourselves.

"We've taken steps to get opportunities to score and couldn't take advantage of them, but the team showed some character on the other end by not making any mistakes defensively and allowing them to get back into the game."

UNLV, seeded third, knows it has to do a lot better against seventh-seeded Air Force.

The two teams will meet tonight at 7 in the semifinals with the winner earning a spot in Saturday's finals. Top-seeded BYU played fourth-seeded Utah this afternoon in the other semifinal.

Air Force (8-10-1) beat UNLV (11-6-2) in the first round of the conference tournament in both 1999 and 2000. In their only meeting this year, the Falcons prevailed, 3-2, at Air Force.

Abdalla said he will make a game-time decision regarding the status of Pedford, who led the team in scoring with 10 goals in the regular season.

"I want to play," Pedford said. "I didn't want to be out of the game tonight because I wanted to score."

UNLV had seven shots on goal and 13 shots total.

Cristyn Enea, the Lady Rebels' second-leading scorer, scored the only goal at 4:33 when she kicked in a rebound off Wyoming goalie Lori Scheider for her eighth goal of the year.

She was apologetic about two more shots she kicked over the goalpost in the second half.

"I was right in the box," she said, shaking her head. "I missed some perfect opportunities.

"It was bad. We're going to look to control the game against Air Force."

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