Reign vs. Royals: Highlights, stats, quotes

Seattle Reign put their final slim playoff hopes to bed on Sunday when they lost 3-0 to the Utah Royals. They allowed Cloé Lacasse to score the first hat trick in the league this season and marked the earliest time from kickoff in league history that a player earned two yellow cards. Not the kind of records you want to break.

The Reign have two matches remaining before they can hit the reset button. Up next is their final home match against the Houston Dash on Friday, October 18. The game will kick off at 7 PM PT and air on Prime Video.

Highlights

Stats

SCORING SUMMARY

3' - Cloé Lacasse - UTAH

20' - Cloé Lacasse - UTAH

45+6' - Cloé Lacasse (assist by Claudia Zornoza) - UTAH

LINEUPS

65' - Tziarra King for Emeri Adames; Veronica Latsko for Ana-Maria Crnogorčević

74' - Nikki Stanton for Jaelin Howell; Ji So-Yun for Olivia Athens; Nerilia Mondesir for Jordyn Huitema

46' - Dana Foederer for Brecken Mozingo

79' - Cameron Tucker for Mini Tanaka;

90' - Shaelan Murison for Cloé Lacasse; Michele Vasconcelos for Ally Sentnor

POSSESSION

Royals: 63.8%

Reign: 36.2%

EXPECTED GOALS

Royals: 2.52

Reign: 0.06

TOTAL SHOTS

Royals: 23

Reign: 3

SHOTS ON TARGET

Royals: 9

Reign: 1

SHOTS OFF TARGET

Royals: 5

Reign: 2

SHOTS BLOCKED

Royals: 9

Reign: 0

SHOTS FROM INSIDE THE BOX

Royals: 15

Reign: 1

TOUCHES INSIDE THE OPP. BOX

Royals: 33

Reign: 7

PASSES

Royals: 529

Reign: 292

PASSING ACCURACY

Royals: 84.9%

Reign: 71.2%

PASSES IN FINAL THIRD

Royals: 136

Reign: 66

PASSING ACCURACY IN FINAL THIRD

Royals: 70.6%

Reign: 50%

CROSSES (EXCLUDING CORNERS)

Royals: 9

Reign: 12

CORNERS WON

Royals: 7

Reign: 1

OFFSIDES

Royals: 3

Reign: 3

FOULS

Royals: 12

Reign: 10

YELLOW CARDS

Royals: 2

Reign: 1

RED CARDS

Royals: 0

Reign: 1

Quotes

Laura Harvey

On balancing feeling the performance wasn't good enough with not getting too defeated:

"It's not about my speeches to be honest. It's about recognizing what things aren't working. It's about, in the first half, I didn't think we did a good enough job of recognizing their pressure. We kept playing ourselves back into the pressure rather than dealing with it and skipping it and solving it. But I think in the second half, obviously scorelines are scorelines, but I said to the group at halftime, we have a choice, right? You either give up or you come out and you show who you are as individuals and who we are as a club and as a team. And I think we did that. Someone's going to have to fine me for that penalty. That is a disgraceful, disgraceful decision to flip the penalty off. And honestly, I think she should have been sent off and that maybe changes the game, right? You get a penalty, she gets sent off, game's completely different. How can you book somebody and not give the penalty? Tell me how that works. That was our day, unfortunately."

On whether giving up early goals has impacted their season:

"Oh, there's no doubt. There's no doubt. I think goals change games. I believe that, and it's so hard to react when not only are the goals things that we should be doing better on, but then also when you get a glimmer of hope, a glimmer of hope [but] things go against you. Unfortunately, that's been the case too many times this year, and that's not making any excuses. That's reality. Goals change games, moments change games. There's just little things and we've shot ourself in the foot. With the corner today, that was not good enough. The first goal, nowhere near good enough. The second and third goal, we could have done better, but at that point we're trying to ride the wave of being down to 10 players. And I said to the group, we've been here before, we've seen how this can work. We've seen how we can do it well and keep a team at bay and even come out with a result.

"But once they scored the second goal, it became challenging. Then obviously the third goal – Claudia's going to be devastated with that one, I'm sure, but there were things we could have done prior to that to prevent it. But yeah, when things aren't going your way and when you're not performing, it's easy to blame the ref and all that type of stuff, which I'm not doing. I just think the decision was shocking. I'm not blaming it for the performance, but football's about momentum, it always has been. So sport is sport, because you can flip things around with momentum real quick and I will fight till the day I die that that is a penalty."

Olivia Athens and Tziarra King

On balancing feeling the performance wasn't good enough with not getting too defeated:

King: "That's a good question. I think the reality of the situation is we wouldn't be professional athletes if we didn't want to perform at our best all the time and expect the absolute best out of ourselves. We are our own biggest critics and hardest evaluators, so obviously this shit hurts with the history of this club. We want to come out every day and represent the badge and put respect on the history. So yeah, I think like you said, it's a game, but it's also our livelihood and what pays our bills and keeps food on our plates, so it's just not good enough and we all hold ourselves to that accountability and when we come off the field, I think we realize we have to focus on ourselves as individuals and as a group expecting better."

On the struggle of coming from behind so often:

Athens: "Yeah, I mean, I think it's an important part of the game. I think if you're not switched on this league you get punished, and unfortunately we need to start games stronger and when something happens, we need to regroup and focus and I think we kind of let our guard down a bit and yeah, we were punished for it, so we need to be better in that regard.

King: "I think too, it hasn't been this way all year. We've had performances this year, we've gone down and come back and rallied. We've had performances this year where we've gone down a player and come back and rallied. So it's inside of us and we know that, and I think that makes that even more painful and knowing that these moments should never deflate us the way that it did today. So it's just learning from it. It's just this is something that leaves a bad taste in our mouth and every game this point forward, the rest of the season and next year and beyond, I hope we can remember what this shit feels like and not allow it to take the wind out of our sails."

On the approach to end the season:

Athens: "I think we want to win these next two games, especially next game being our last home game and winning for the fans that have supported us all season. So yeah, we're going to come out trying to win both games for sure. Yeah, and I think at this point, finish the season with pride and how we want to play and show down the field and give a hundred percent and hopefully finish the season strong."