The Gators lined up to defend four corner kicks in their season opener Friday night. Two of them ended up in the back of the net.
Those two corners and a goal resulting from a free kick accounted for three of the four goals No. 21 Florida allowed in their 4-1 loss to unranked Miami.
"Miami did a terrific job of taking advantage of the set pieces, and we obviously didn't do a very good job of defending them," coach Becky Burleigh said. "Their execution was terrific and our execution in defending them was very poor."
As a result, the Gators have begun working on set pieces more in practice this week.
"I think those things are fixable for us, and if it has to be exposed, I'd rather have it be exposed early already so we have a chance to fix that before we move on," Burleigh said.
Senior forward Erika Tymrak attributed the Gators' failings on defense to top-to-bottom issues.
"The defense starts with the forwards," she said. "If we don't do our jobs, they can't do their jobs. It's not fair to blame anybody for this. It's not the defense's fault, it's the team's fault."
Set pieces are an emphasis for Florida moving forward, but Tymrak did not blame those failures alone for the loss.
"It's just another thing to work on, we're going to have to work on them more in practice, bust that out, and hopefully it won't happen again," Tymrak said.
Burleigh said Miami brought a lot of physicality to set pieces, which can be difficult to replicate in practice.
"The hard thing about defending set pieces in training is it's a very physical, in-your-face type of thing to do, Burleigh said.
"You risk injury when you do it, but ultimately we're going to have to throw that in the mix and hope for the best in terms of our players."
Florida will face two Atlantic Coast Conference teams this weekend, with games against No. 8 North Carolina on Friday and No. 2 Duke on Sunday, teams that will likely play a similar style.
"You've got to accept that's how they're going to play and work on it," Tymrak said.
