On the day the Angels went to the World Series, the No. 12 UCLA
women’s soccer team couldn’t get over an early swing
and miss.
Senior defender Tracey Winzen fanned on a bounding Stanford pass
and was forced to bring down a striker less than five minutes into
the game. The No. 2 Cardinal scored on the awarded free kick and
held on, downing the Bruins 1-0 at Drake Stadium.
“Big games like these sometimes come down to free kicks,
and that’s what happened today,” UCLA head coach
Jillian Ellis said.
Stanford had jumped on USC early two nights before when the
Cardinal (11-1, 2-0 Pac-10) scored on a penalty kick two minutes
into the game.
Ellis had made her players aware of it.
“I told them that we needed to play aggressively, but not
to give up stupid fouls,” Ellis said. “She had to foul,
because the (Stanford) kid was in there, but she was in there
because of a mental mistake.”
The Bruins (9-3, 1-1) stormed out in the second half after
getting only two shots off in the first 45 minutes, but Stanford
goalkeeper Nicole Barnhart was equal to the task. Barhart turned
away 13 second-half Bruin shots, including a straight-on chance
from defender Nandi Pryce.
“It was surreal, seeing the ball up there,” said
Pryce of the richochet off a Whitney Jones shot that hit the
crossbar. “She is an amazing goalkeeper.”
The Bruins launched the offensive barrage despite
Stanford’s best attempts to lay back and grind out the last
85 minutes of the contest. The Cardinal fell into a 4-4-2, with
only a pair of forwards, and kept the pace as choppy as
possible.
It took UCLA a while to get over both the early deficit and the
mystique of playing a Stanford team that will be ranked No. 1 in
the nation this week.
“Finally, in the last 25 minutes we realized that we could
play with them and that we were better than them,” Pryce
said.
With Stanford beating both UCLA and USC, the Bruins will likely
be forced to run the table to have any kind of chance at winning
the Pac-10 title.
“The goal we took in was winning the Pac-10 title, and to
do that you have to beat Stanford,” Ellis said. “But if
we can bring what we did for the last 45 minutes today every game
from here on out, we’re going to win.”
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The Bruins started the weekend with a 1-0 win of their own, over
fifth-ranked Cal. Redshirt sophomore Lindsay Greco scored in the
25th minute when she headed a pass,then blocked it with her stomach
past Cal’s Sani Post.