The UCLA men’s soccer team went in to this weekend looking for a win; with injuries and a rough nonconference schedule, this season has been one of the worst in recent memory.
It wasn’t looking much better with Stanford and No. 16 California coming to town. The Golden Bears beat the Bruins 4-1 to win the Pac-10 the last time they were in Westwood.
Friday’s game was a disappointing start against two good Bay Area schools: UCLA (5-5-2, 1-1-1 Pac-10) and Stanford (4-2-5, 1-0-2) tied 0-0 after double-overtime in a wet and hard-fought affair.
The big game against Cal (7-4-1, 2-2-0) was shaping up similarly.
That is, until the 88th minute, when Maxwell Griffin tapped a pass from Tony Beltran into the back of the net. After a lap around the field and three more minutes, the Bruins won, 1-0.
“It was a broken-down play and we got the second ball,” sophomore midfielder Chance Myers said. “We got it wide to Andrew (Sinderhoff) and (he) got it in to Tony (Beltran). Tony just crossed it in there and the goal was wide open.”
It was an enormous goal. The Bruins have only scored 12 goals on the season and have been shutout five times.
“It’s finally good to get a goal,” Griffin said. “It’s so good to beat California. It’s good to come back with a big win.”
The win was more exaggerated than the 1-0 score would indicate. The Bruins held the ball for most of the game and were able to limit Cal’s two offensive weapons, freshman Andrew Weidman and senior Javier Ayala-Hill, to one shot combined. Ayala-Hill was responsible for the Bears’ victory over the Bruins last year after scoring a hat trick, and Weidman is Cal’s top scorer.
“It’s not that anybody can keep up with us,” assistant coach Jose Lopez said. “If you look at possession, we probably did 60-40 in our favor as far as possession. If you look at the number of shots and the number of corner kicks, it’s about even. It’s just that we have been a little unlucky.”
Injuries had certainly been a part of that bad luck. But the Bruins returned two players over the weekend who made a significant impact ““ Myers on Friday and defender Brandon Owens on Sunday. The return of Owens was especially significant because it allowed coach Jorge Salcedo to move Myers back to the midfield. Myers had three shots, with one on goal.
“Soccer’s funny,” Salcedo said. “I thought we had an overall better performance on Friday than we did on Sunday, but we win the game Sunday and not on Friday.”
BRUINS DON THROWBACKS: UCLA came out in old-school, powder blue uniforms for its Sunday showdown versus Cal.
The jerseys commemorated the 1967 soccer team, the first NCAA-sanctioned soccer team at UCLA. The team was honored at halftime, as well.
The first NCAA soccer championship was held in 1959, but UCLA did not have a varsity team until 1967.
UCLA won its first men’s soccer title in 1985. In all, the Bruins have won four national championships, in 1985, 1990, 1997 and 2004. Only three schools have won more crowns than UCLA: Saint Louis (10), Indiana (7) and Virginia (5). San Francisco has also won four championships.