When a team has to claw back from a two-goal hole, it has to find some sort of motivation to drive it harder than before.
For No. 15 UF, Kentucky gave them that little extra push to get back in the game after its second goal.
"The team got fired up when (the Wildcats) scored their second goal and the goal scorer (Giuleana Lopez) did the Gator chomp down the sideline," UF coach Becky Burleigh said. "I don't think that was a good move on their part."
The Gators (9-2-1, 4-0 Southeastern Conference) responded to the mocking action with two goals of their own to force Sunday's match into overtime, and then eventually winning it 3-2.
In the second period of overtime, freshman midfielder Lindsay Thompson put the winning goal just inside the top-right corner of the net.
Kentucky wasn't the only difficult test UF faced this past weekend.
Its match Friday night at Vanderbilt swayed back and forth all game and also required extra time for a decisive victory. Junior midfielder Jessica Eicken finally ended the seesaw-type match with a header in the 95th minute for a 4-3 win.
While Burleigh said her team passed the two tests, it was confronted with this weekend with flying colors, and she still worries about her team's knack for dramatic victories-three of its four SEC games have gone to overtime.
"(Sunday's game) was a real eye opener to see (the fight to comeback) in the team, and it was great," Burleigh said. "In the big picture, we don't want to keep putting ourselves in the position to have to becoming from behind all the time, so we got to shore up our defense a little bit."
To help give the defense more consistency, Burleigh decided to stop rotating goalies every other match and gave sophomore goalie Katie Fraine the permanent job in the net over sophomore Meghan Berlingo.
"We have been wanting to make this decision all year long, and it finally was time just to make it," Burleigh said.
The move did not show immediate results.
The five goals in one weekend has been the most given up in the season, but Burleigh said not all of them are to be blamed on Fraine and will look at tape to see what went wrong.
Fraine will need to stay on top of her game to keep her new job though, as Burleigh will continue to evaluate her goalie's play in case a switch to Berlingo is needed.
