The UCLA men’s soccer team started the Pac-10 season off on the right foot with a 3-1 road win against the Oregon State Beavers on Friday.
The No. 4 Bruins move to 6-1 on the season while the Beavers drop to 4-3-2.
UCLA overcame an early 1-0 deficit from a goal scored by Oregon State junior forward Brian Ramsey in the 19th minute when the Bruins tied the game before halftime. Two second-half goals spurred the Bruins to their fifth straight victory.
“You could tell from the kickoff in the second half that we were going to be better,” coach Jorge Salcedo said. “We were sharper.”
Senior midfielder Kyle Nakazawa was instrumental in UCLA’s victory over Oregon State, scoring two goals and assisting on the other in his first performance since being named Pac-10 Player of the Week and garnering both Top Drawer Soccer’s and College Soccer News’ National Player of the Week awards.
“He works very hard, and good things happen when you work hard,” Salcedo said of Nakazawa. “His mentality and his approach have been tremendous throughout the season.”
Down a goal in the 37th minute, Nakazawa won the ball midfield, dribbled by two Oregon State defenders, and ripped a shot to the back post from inside the penalty box to equalize for the Bruins. Salcedo called it a “real highlight real goal.”
The first stanza ended with the score knotted at 1-1, but the second half was all UCLA, much as it has been all season.
Nakazawa continued to terrorize the Beaver defense, but in the second half his focus was more on set pieces. In the 64th minute, Nakazawa crossed a free kick into the box from 25 yards away and connected with the head of freshman midfielder Ryan Hollingshead, who put it into the back of the net to give the Bruins the lead once and for all.
Nakazawa scored again 24 minutes later on another UCLA free kick around the same area of the field. This time, Nakazawa’s cross found its way past Oregon State sophomore goalkeeper Steve Spangler and gave Nakazawa his second goal of the game and his team-high sixth of the year.
“(My second goal) was actually the same exact play (that led to) Ryan’s goal,” Nakazawa said. “I was trying to do the same thing: Drop it on the six (yard box) and just put it into an area where if no one got on it, it would be dangerous for their keeper.”
With the two today, UCLA has now scored 12 of their 16 goals on the season in the second half, a trait Nakazawa says is an improvement over last year.
“That was something that we lacked last year,” Nakazawa said. “In years before, we would come out flat and go down, and it’d be hard for us to fight back and find a way to win. (Now) once we go down, we don’t crumble. We lift ourselves up and fight back.
“But it’s something that we need to work on as well, coming out and putting teams away in the first half. There are positives and negatives about it.”