Stanford stands between women’s soccer, finals
Kristina Larsen and the Bruins will face Stanford in the College Cup this weekend.
By Rebecca Lee
Dec. 2, 2009 11:36 p.m.
Lauren Cheney has never been to the NCAA finals. Neither have fellow seniors Kristina Larsen, Dea Cook, Lauren Wilmoth and the rest of the UCLA women’s soccer team.
The Bruins will have a chance to get past the semifinal round en route to a national championship when they travel to College Station, Texas, this weekend in their seventh-straight College Cup berth. But a familiar foe stands in the way.
Friday’s contest is a rematch of a regular season game between No. 1 seeds UCLA (21-2-1) and Stanford (24-0-0), in which the Cardinal won 2-0 at Cagan Stadium on Oct. 18.
“We know that we have a little bit of discomfort that we did lose to them before,” Larsen said. “We’re going to take this game as a new game and know that we have to win to get to the finals. And I’m a senior, and I’ve never been to the finals. So it’s kind of like one step at a time. Stanford’s a great team and we know what we have to do to go out and compete with them.”
Coach Jillian Ellis insisted that the Bruins don’t see this game against the Pac-10 champions as a vengeance match.
“I think the revenge and all that kind of stuff is not a part of what we’re about,” Ellis said. “It really is about playing a quality opponent, knowing that we’re going to have to play well and knowing that they stand between us and getting to a final. So I think there’s familiarity between the teams, I think there’s tremendous respect between the teams and it’s just going to be about the performance on the night.”
The Bruins have their work cut out for them as Stanford, which has won every game this season, outshot UCLA 24-14 in the October match. The Cardinal is led by the Pac-10 Player of the Year, forward Kelley O’Hara, and forward Christen Press. O’Hara and Press form the highest-scoring tandem in the country, combining for 118 points on 45 goals and 28 assists.
“They’re a team that scores a lot of goals, so their attacking personalities are very strong,” Ellis said. “They don’t give up a whole lot of goals. They’re just a very strong team. So obviously our challenge is limit their number of shots, limit their goal-scoring opportunities, and when we get our opportunities, finish them. But I think it’s going to be a great matchup.”
Larsen echoed Ellis’ sentiments on the Cardinal.
“Stanford is known to be a really good, possessive team, and their speed is ridiculous,” Larsen said. “So we kind of have to know that they’re going to come at us with speed and that we need to play the ball around as well and possess the ball with them, but it’s going to be hard physically matched too. If we come out and play the way we’ve been playing, I think that things will go OK. We just got to go out and give everything because it’s the last two games of the season.”
But if UCLA’s outstanding play in the postseason is any indication, the Bruins will be up to the challenge.
The Bruins have scored more goals than any other team in the NCAA tournament with 17.
UCLA also has a dynamic duo of its own in sophomore forward Sydney Leroux and Cheney, who have combined for 92 points on 40 goals and 12 assists on the season. The two forwards have been on fire in the postseason. In the first four rounds of the tournament, Leroux posted eight goals and Cheney registered five goals and five assists.
“We’re in a good spot; we’re playing well,” Ellis said. “We’re definitely not going to make this game any bigger. It really is about performance. Our routine, our expectations, is going to be the same.”
Should UCLA beat Stanford Friday, the Bruins will face the winner of the North Carolina-Notre Dame match. The defending champion Tar Heels beat UCLA 7-2 in its season opener.
Even though the Bruins are 0-2 all-time against Notre Dame and 0-8 against the defending champion North Carolina, Larsen said UCLA does not have a preference of opponent.
“It doesn’t matter, not at all,” she said. “We just want to get there and win.”
Can they get over the hump and win a championship this year?
“Every year, that’s my belief,” Ellis said. “I think if you go into a tournament like this, you have to have the mentality preparing to win, and that’s exactly what we’re doing.”
