Maybe they needed just one last minute to extend their season.
One last opportunity at a shot on goal could have made all the
difference. So could have one of their multitude of second-half
shots that bounced or curved the other way. But none of that
happened for the Bruins Saturday night at Drake Stadium.
After UCLA men’s soccer coach Jorge Salcedo’s
request for one last throw-in was denied in the final period,
UCLA’s hopes of staying alive in the postseason were dashed
as St. John’s walked away with the 2-1 upset in the third
round of the NCAA Tournament.
“We’re disappointed without a doubt,” Salcedo
said. “We played poorly in the first half, and they took it
to us. In the second half it was much better for us, a lot more
energy, a lot more speed to our play, and urgency to our game. In
the end we probably had chances to tie the game.
“It was a great season capped by a bad game. They came to
play in the first half and we didn’t. When we started to come
alive, it was too late,” sophomore forward Chad Barrett
added.
Combating high winds and frigid weather more familiar to the
11th seeded Red Storm than sixth seeded Bruins, UCLA came out
uninspired on both ends of the field.
“We came out a little flat-footed,” sophomore
midfielder Benny Feilhaber said. “The weather obviously
didn’t help us much, but we didn’t come out to play
like we should in a (round of) sixteen match-up in the playoffs.
Two games away from the Final Four, the first half just
wasn’t what it should have been.”
The Bruins, who had relied heavily on their eleven corner kicks
in their win against Loyola Marymount, failed to get a single
corner kick in the first half. It wasn’t until the 32nd
minute that UCLA even recorded its first shot. Overall, the Bruins
were outshot 5 to 3 in the first half, with two of UCLA’s
shots having little chance of finding the back of the net.
“We weren’t challenging everything,” Feilhaber
said. “We weren’t connecting passes. Everybody was
launching the ball forward. We tried to just dribble, dribble,
dribble.”
Despite the lackluster performance on offense, the UCLA defense
managed to contain the Red Storm until the 41st minute when senior
midfielder Andre Schmid took advantage of the slippery conditions.
Dribbling around a sliding Bruin defender, Schmid fired a shot past
diving UCLA goalie Eric Reed into the left hand corner of the
goal.
Going into the locker room down at halftime was a familiar
situation for the Bruins, having come from behind to notch
victories four times this season. Overall, UCLA had scored nearly
twice as many goals in the second half of games compared to the
first half, 23 to 12.
“(The) game’s never over,” freshman midfielder
Marvell Wynne said. “That’s our mentality. It’s
not over until the last whistle blows. Even though at times it may
seem like it’s pointless, we (have) proved that it’s
never pointless.”
This mindset was tested at the beginning of the second half. At
the 59:45 mark, Red Storm defender Ryan Kelly scored from 25 yards
out on a free kick that managed to allude both the defense’s
wall and Reed.
Ironically, this goal seemed to be just what the Bruins needed
to get back in the game. UCLA responded to the 2-0 deficit with a
renewed offensive mindset.
During the last thirty minutes of the game, the ball was almost
exclusively in St. John’s territory, with the Bruins
recording nine second half shots on goal.
When senior forward Mike Enfield scored at the 72nd minute on a
quick turn-around shot placed into the lower left hand side of the
goal, the momentum was entirely in the Bruins’ favor.
“We were doing well after the goal by Mike Enfield,”
Wynne said. “We were peaking and we had the confidence that
we were going to come back. But in the end when we lost, it hurt so
bad.”
“We were going to score,” Barrett said.
“There’s no way they were going to keep the ball out of
that net. We had so much momentum.”
Even before Enfield’s goal, it seemed like a matter of
time before the Bruins would get on the scoreboard.
In the 71st minute, a header by Barrett skipped narrowly wide of
the goal. Then, after the Bruins did score their lone goal, Enfield
managed to get behind the goalie in the 78th minute, but was unable
to control a fast pass and shot the ball into the left side of the
net.
In the last twenty minutes, it was the play of Red Storm goalie
Bill Gaudette that ultimately thwarted UCLA’s championship
hopes. Facing a non-stop barrage of shots, Gaudette recorded a
total of five saves to Reed’s three saves.
“UCLA attacked really well in the second half and Billy
made some really good saves as far as being consistent and not
giving up any rebounds,” St. John’s coach Dave Masur
said.
“Maybe we were up 2-0 a little too early, held back in a
little and UCLA, how good they are, how aggressive they are, they
really push forward and gave us more than we could
handle.”
However, the Red Storm managed to hold on in the end, leaving
UCLA’s players devastated.
For the three UCLA seniors, this loss caps a career that
included three consecutive Pac-10 titles, highlighted by a 2002
National Championship. But this does not mean that this loss hurts
any less.
“It was a decent season” said senior defender Aaron
Lopez, who scored the game winning goal in the 2002 National
Championship game.
“We won some, we got some awards, we won Pac-10 and then
some players got personal awards. But it was an average season for
UCLA soccer. We expect the best and we came up pretty
short.”