No. 2 women’s soccer relieved to be at home for rest of regular season

The UCLA women’s soccer team will have the luxury of finishing the home stretch of the regular season, appropriately enough, at home.

The team has spent the season traveling to Northern California, the Rocky Mountains and even embarking on a 12-day cross-country road trip stopping by Indiana and North Carolina. With the last three games in the regular season against Oregon State, Oregon and USC scheduled to be played on home soil, junior midfielder Samantha Mewis said the team will be able to find some relief in not having to deal with the ordeals that come with traveling.

“It’s definitely a relief to play at home. We’ve been traveling a lot; it’s been tiring, and we’re looking forward to having home games and having that advantage,” Mewis said. “We have three really important games left, so hopefully we can play to our advantage, and it’ll just be nice to not have to fly and travel.”

Riding out all the tedious traveling has paid off for the Bruins (14-1-2, 6-0-2 Pac-12), who now approach the tail end of the season No. 2 in the nation. Over this stretch, the Bruins have dominated Pac-12 competition, as the team is not only the overall conference leader with 20 points, but also the only remaining team to be undefeated against conference opponents.

Junior goalkeeper Katelyn Rowland said that she and her teammates can attribute their success to one simple concept: putting the team first.

“When you put the team before yourself, good things happen. And we’ve just been really focusing on the team’s success, and the team as a whole getting better, and in that, individuals will get better,” Rowland said.

But if there’s anything worth nitpicking about UCLA’s 12-game unbeaten run, the team’s two ties against Washington and Utah would have to be it. UCLA made a strong case for being the better team in both games, outshooting Washington and Utah 24-4 and 23-5, respectively. But the Bruins’ lack of a finishing touch cost them the chance to concretize that dominance, leaving them as their opponents’ equals on those outings.

With the playoffs approaching, finishing becomes even more crucial. In the regular season, the consequence of finishing the game in a tie simply means failing to cash in on two points toward your conference standings. In the playoffs, however, failing to break the deadlock leads to penalty kicks – an unpredictable situation in which the better team doesn’t necessarily win.

“When it’s playoff time, it’s win or go home. So we want to win games in regulation, not deal with overtime or golden goals or PKs or any of that stuff,” said coach Amanda Cromwell. “I think we’ve had a few games that we should have scored more goals and put the game out of reach, and we have to be better at doing that.”

But on the brighter side of things, Mewis said that the Bruins’ recent performances along their undefeated streak will set them right on track for the playoffs, which will begin in two weeks.

“I definitely think we’re ready; we have a lot of veterans, and the freshmen have done an awesome job transitioning to the college game,” she said. “We’re really excited for the postseason and we know it’s going to be a lot of hard work, but we’re definitely ready, and we can’t wait for it to be here.”