MALIBU “”mdash; It was a first half Danesha Adams won’t
want to remember, but it was a second half that she won’t
want to forget.
With two second-half goals less than four minutes apart, the
Bruin forward brought the No. 4 UCLA women’s soccer team
(10-1) back from a 1-0 halftime deficit and gave the Bruins a lead
they wouldn’t relinquish in a 2-1 victory over No. 10
Pepperdine (9-1-1) on Sunday at Tari Frahm Rokus Field.
It was the type of second-half showing that rendered a missed
penalty kick a thing of the past.
“I just had to get past the fact that I missed a
PK,” Adams said. “I just had to deal with that. In the
first half I kind of put my head down and didn’t deal with
that very well.”
It was a tale of two halves for the Bruin sophomore, whose first
half included the missed penalty kick in the 13th minute and a
handful of poorly taken chances.
“The biggest thing we work on with her is her
mentality,” UCLA coach Jill Ellis said. “I said to her,
“˜That opportunity has passed, it’s over, now you can
still change the game and erase that.'”
Change the game is exactly what Adams did.
Though Pepperdine appeared to be the better team in the first
half, UCLA clearly took the initiative at the beginning of the
second half and began to control the possession for long periods of
time.
The Bruins’ first breakthrough came in the 64th minute,
when Adams took a ball played forward by defender Bristyn Davis and
blasted it past the Pepperdine goalkeeper.
The game didn’t have a chance to settle down before Adams
struck again in the 67th minute, this time taking a perfectly
played ball by forward Iris Mora and slotting it through the legs
of the goalkeeper for what proved to be the game-winner.
“They came out here to prove to us that they could beat
us,” said Adams, who leads the team with 10 goals. “In
the first half they proved that. In the second half we came out and
let them know that that’s not happening.”
Pepperdine clearly had the better performance in the first half,
especially after the penalty kick, which saw goalkeeper Anna
Picarelli make a fantastic save diving to her right to punch away
Adams’ shot.
“When they made the big save it lifted them, so
emotionally I knew the tide changed at that point,” Ellis
said.
“I thought we came out and started quite well, and when
that happened, it just took the wind out. Our confidence went
down.”
The Waves got on the board first shortly after the missed
penalty on a defensive miscue from the Bruins, and UCLA entered
halftime in an unfamiliar position.
“The first half was a little chaotic, but we needed a half
like that under our belt where you’re kind of behind and you
need to play catch up, because you’re going to be caught in
that scenario,” midfielder Stacy Lindstrom said.
At halftime, Ellis asked her players how many of them had ever
come back in a game after trailing at halftime. Everyone raised
their hand, and then they went out and did it again, running the
team’s winning streak to six matches.
“I was pleased with the way we responded at halftime and
came out,” Ellis said.
“It was a game of two halves, really. They owned the first
half, and we owned the second.”
UCLA, who leads the all-time series against Pepperdine 9-2,
outshot the Waves 17-9 in the match. The Bruins open Pac-10 play
Friday when they host rival USC.