With a Pac-10 title on the horizon and only a few games left in the regular season, the UCLA men’s soccer team (7-4-5, 5-1-1 Pac-10) will host California tonight and Stanford on Sunday at Drake Stadium. Thanks to an impressive 2-0 victory at Washington and 1-0 shutout of Oregon State in Corvallis, Ore., the Bruins are riding a four-game winning streak and have gone unbeaten in 10 of their last 11 matches.
Tonight, No. 8 Cal (7-2-4, 2-1-2 Pac-10) will have a chance to seek revenge against the Bruins, hoping to stay in the hunt for the conference crown. In the previous matchup between the two teams earlier this season in Berkeley, UCLA came away with a dramatic 3-2 overtime victory. The Cardinal (3-8-2, 1-3-1 Pac-10), whose only conference victory came against the Bruins in Palo Alto, is currently in last place in the Pac-10.
Although the Bruins might have had a rough start against nonconference opponents, the team has learned from its mistakes and has improved its performance in the last 11 games. Coach Jorge Salcedo believes the records don’t always entail what is to come.
“With the records it’s sometimes misleading to see UCLA not having as many wins as some of the other teams in the Pac-10,” Salcedo said. “I feel that in our nonconference schedule we didn’t have as many wins as we would like, but it prepared us for our conference games and I think you see the result of that.”
In the last game against Cal, junior forward David Estrada scored after an assist from senior defender Brad Rusin. This time around, Estrada believes there are differences, but still feels optimistic.
“One of (Cal’s) starting defenders is out, so they’re going to be looking different than last time,” Estrada said. “I think we’ve been doing a good job of scoring goals, and hopefully we can keep that up because it gives our defense a lot of confidence.”
Because Stanford’s only conference win was against UCLA, the Bruins will have to clean their defensive errors to redeem themselves on Sunday. Freshman defender Andy Rose believes the team won’t repeat the same mistakes as last time.
“We were pretty comfortable against them, and we just had a few mistakes in the back,” Rose said. “Lately everything has been superb in the back and (junior goalkeeper Brian) Perk in the goal has been great. They’ve been scoring goals, but we’ve been playing against good teams all year so I don’t see why we can’t win this week.”