Men’s soccer remains in the hunt for Pac-12 title despite injury-plagued season
Junior transfer forward Mohammed Kamara is UCLA men’s soccer’s leading goal scorer this year with four. Kamara missed both of the Bruins’ games this past weekend and has been hampered by multiple undisclosed injuries. (Isa Saalabi/Daily Bruin)
By Marcus Veal
Oct. 10, 2018 12:33 a.m.
No. 21 UCLA men’s soccer (7-4, 3-1 Pac-12) has a little less than a month left in its regular season, but its roster has been plagued with injuries up to this point.
Several starters and substitutes have sat out multiple games due to injuries this fall. Despite the injury bug, UCLA is still tied in points atop the Pac-12 standings with No. 10 Stanford (6-1-3, 3-0).
Junior forward Mohammed Kamara – who leads the team with four goals – has been sidelined for over a week with multiple injuries that coach Jorge Salcedo said Thursday were small.
“(Kamara) will be back soon,” Salcedo said. “There’s a chance that he could have play on Sunday – it will be a game-time decision.”
The transfer from Tyler Junior College did not suit up against Oregon State and has yet to play since the game against Stanford on Sept. 30.
Sophomore forward Santiago Herrera, a starter for seven games this season, has also missed three games with injury.
Sophomore forward Milan Iloski, who has stepped into the lineup while Kamara has been out, had his appendix removed in the offseason, which caused him to miss the first six games of the year.
“We’re pretty banged up and have a lot of players who are injured,” Salcedo said. “Luckily for us, we have a really deep team with guys that can step up and perform.”
A banged-up team means those who are healthy will be playing more minutes than usual.
Redshirt junior defender Matthew Powell and senior midfielder Kike Poleo said that the team had some heavy legs Sunday from Thursday’s win against Washington.
“It’s kind of tough to get going for a noon game, especially if it’s the second game of the weekend,” Poleo said. “We did well to get ourselves going and it was important to do that in the second half because we’ve been trying to work on that through the season.”
Salcedo said that he wished that the team played better in the second half against Washington on Thursday. On Sunday against Oregon State though, the coach said that the Bruins’ performance in the second half was a step above their performance in the first half.
“That’s what we want to do more often,” Salcedo said. “We want to create more dangerous moments and have that be a staple for how we play the game for the entire game.”
The Bruins and Cardinal currently have three conference wins each and sit at nine points apiece with seven games left to go for UCLA before the NCAA tournament.
The other four teams in the conference are all six points behind UCLA and Stanford. Washington, California, Oregon State and San Diego State are in a four-way tie for third place with one conference win and three points each.
“Things are looking good, we’re three and one and we’re right where we want to be,” Powell said. “We’re right there with Stanford and hopefully we can continue to get our points and we’ll be OK.”
