Sonoma stops complaining long enough to beat UCLA
By Daily Bruin Staff
April 16, 2001 9:00 p.m.
Sonoma State 8 UCLA 5
By Will Whitehorn
Daily Bruin Contributor
The players on the Sonoma State sideline were so busy
complaining, it’s hard to believe they directed any of their
attention to their game with UCLA. Indeed, for three quarters it
looked like the Bruins were the only ones to show up.
“Their shots are going in at like 24 miles an hour,”
said one Sonoma bench jockey. “They can’t
play.”
“How is that not a foul?” yelled another coach on a
routine hit.
UCLA (6-9) held the upper hand through three quarters of its
lacrosse match Saturday at the Intramural Field, but a reversal of
fortune at the beginning of the fourth quarter led to a
disappointing 8-5 loss to No. 4 Sonoma (11-2).
“I thought we did a pretty good job,” UCLA Head
Coach Mike Allan said. “Our game plan was pretty much to slow
things down and possess the ball as much as we could. We did a good
job of that for three quarters.”
UCLA’s ball control prevented Sonoma’s uptempo
offense from igniting, but the Cassocks’ scrappy defense kept
the Bruins off the scoreboard. Sonoma scored the game’s first
goal on a shot by Will Burson, and built a brief 2-0 lead after the
first quarter.
UCLA caught fire in the second quarter when Andrew So bounced a
shot in on the Bruins’ first possession to trim the deficit
to one. Moments later, another shot by Bruin Tillman Endsley found
the net and knotted the game at two, which remained the score at
the half.
The Cassocks retook the lead at 3-2 early in the third, then
were forced to withstand a very busy minute. UCLA tied the game
with a shot by Josh Kube, and ten seconds later claimed the lead
when So fed Andrew Geiss a wraparound pass that eventually found
the goal. The shot prompted a premature celebration by the Bruins
and more complaints by Sonoma. The Cassocks tied the game 30
seconds later. The teams remained deadlocked into the fourth.
UCLA fell into a lull at the beginning of the fourth, and it
cost them dearly. The Cassocks rallied for three goals in the first
four minutes of the period, all but sealing the Bruins’ fate.
The teams exchanged goals down the stretch to close the
scoring.
Sonoma State Head Coach Doug Carl reacted sharply to
UCLA’s game plan.
“When UCLA came out in their ““ I don’t want to
call it a “˜stall,’ but a very deliberate ball control
offense ““ it makes it very difficult to play what purists
would call a run-and-gun game,” he said. “Their
possession time was probably two-thirds of the game.
“(But) Mike Allan is an extremely smart coach,” he
added. “He put together a very good game plan for
us.”
Despite the loss, Allan was satisfied with UCLA’s
performance.
“Goals were kind of hard to come by,” he said.
“When they put a few together in a row it put us in a bit of
a hole. Otherwise, I thought we did a good job executing our game
plan. I’m happy with our effort.”
