After playing three straight road games over the past two weeks, the UCLA men’s soccer team returned home over the weekend to take on the California Golden Bears and the Stanford Cardinal at Drake Stadium in the Bruins’ first Pac-10 home games of the season.
On Friday, the No. 4 Bruins downed No. 10 California 1-0 on senior striker David Estrada’s 15th minute goal from the top of the box. Coupled with senior goalkeeper Brian Perk’s spectacular performance in the second half, the Bruins walked away victorious.
UCLA defeated the No. 18 Cardinal 2-0 on Sunday thanks to goals from freshman striker Chandler Hoffman and senior defender Sean Alvarado and another clean sheet turned in by Perk and the Bruin defense.
“We love playing at home,” Alvarado said. “We’re the kind of team that likes to move the ball around, and our surface is prime for that. It’s huge, and we like to stretch teams out and move the ball around.”
The wins take the Bruins to 8-1-2 overall and 3-0-2 in the Pac-10. The Golden Bears (8-5-0, 2-3-0) have now dropped three of their last four games after losing 2-1 in overtime to San Diego State on Sunday. Stanford is now 8-3-1 overall and 2-2-1 in Pac-10 play.
“If you look at the point totals (in the Pac-10), we’re really in the driver’s seat,” Perk said after Sunday’s game. “Next weekend we play (California and Stanford on the road) so if we can go up there and do the same things we did down here, there’s a chance we could wrap it up next weekend, which would be huge for us.”
UCLA dominated Cal in the first half, outshooting them 12-1.
“We talked about coming out, getting after them and letting them know from minute one of the first half that we weren’t going to sit back,” UCLA coach Jorge Salcedo said. “We were pleased that the first 45 minutes (against California) were probably the best 45 minutes of the season for us.”
The Bears seemed out of sync the first half, but pushed forward more effectively in the second half. Perk, who went relatively untested for the majority of the first half, was called into action on multiple occasions in the second, making a highlight-reel save on a shot by Cal junior midfielder Hector Jimenez in the 79th minute.
In the waning seconds of the game, UCLA senior midfielder Kyle Nakazawa was knocked down by a California player in a dead ball situation, and the ensuing fracas carried over until after the clock had run out. Salcedo called the incident “water under the bridge” but did mention that he was not happy with how the opposing players acted.
Sunday’s match was a choppier affair. The Bruins weren’t as efficient with the ball as they were against California but did enough to secure their third Pac-10 victory of the season.
In the 33rd minute, senior midfielder Michael Stephens won the ball from a Stanford defender and found Hoffman five yards away from the goal with a cross. Hoffman put the ball away to give UCLA a 1-0 lead. Stephens and freshman fullback Shawn Singh combined to assist on Alvarado’s goal in the 75th minute. Alvarado was in the middle of a fight for the ball in the box but managed to head it into the side of the goal to put the game out of reach for the Cardinal.