Struggling UCLA, Colorado women’s soccer teams to face off
Senior defender Madison Tye and the UCLA women’s soccer team will face Colorado and Utah this weekend. The Bruins find themselves in a rare position midway through conference play – with a losing record. (Aubrey Yeo/Daily Bruin senior staff)
Women's soccer
COLORADO
Today, 6 p.m
Drake Stadium
Pac-12 Networks
UTAH
Sunday, 1 p.m
Drake Stadium
Pac-12 Networks
By Korbin Placet
Oct. 23, 2015 12:52 a.m.
If this were a year ago, the women’s soccer matchup between UCLA and Colorado could’ve had conference championship implications.
But “Back to the Future Day” has come and gone, and with it, talk about years past.
The actual 2015 picture depicts the former playoff teams as far cries from their past selves – their 2014 selves, in fact, when the Bruins and Buffs finished first and third in the Pac-12 respectively.
Instead, UCLA (6-7-1, 2-3-1 Pac-12) and Colorado (7-6-2, 1-4-1) find themselves in a similarly downtrodden situation ahead of their Friday matchup. Now, both middle-of-the-table teams essentially need to win out the rest of the season in order to keep any playoff hopes alive.
Even though the prescribed remedy, winning, applies to both teams as they look to navigate the remaining sink-or-swim games, how they each arrived at this situation is a different story.
The Bruins’ losing record doesn’t simply come from an inability to score – in fact, other than a 1-0 loss to Long Beach State, UCLA has managed to score at least one goal in each of its six other losses.
In the 14 games it has played, the team has found the back of the net 20 times. But for each goal UCLA has scored, it has seen a mirror image on the other end of the field.
It has become an all-too-common narrative for the Bruins in their losing efforts; they concede enough early goals to mire themselves in a hole too big for any late comeback to dig up.
And UCLA’s defensive woes are only underlined by a season that has seen numerous permutations of a starting defense, taken from a pool of seven different defenders and three different goalkeepers.
The Buffs on the other hand, have a smaller defense than the Bruins. But Colorado’s pattern when it comes to losses is frequently coming up empty-handed; the team has been shutout in five of its six losses, with last week’s 2-1 defeat to No. 4 Stanford being the sole anomaly.
If UCLA can beat Colorado to the punch in learning from past mistakes by the Friday deadline, it’ll likely be the team that keeps its NCAA Tournament bid alive for at least one more game.
But there won’t be much reprieve for the Bruins even if they can beat the Buffs and the Utes (5-7-3, 2-4-0) this weekend. UCLA will still need to find a way to beat Stanford, No. 14 Cal and a USC team that has a 5-1 conference record.
It almost looks as if this weekend’s games are the easiest part.
