Senior midfielder Chelsea Cline and the UCLA women’s soccer team are coming off two losses while going into their first game of the NCAA.
Some teams might be daunted by closing out the regular season with their only two losses.
Some teams might take those losses and judge themselves by them without looking back on the success of their season leading up to it.
Some teams might let themselves continue on a downward turn.
Not UCLA women’s soccer.
Even though the Bruins suffered two L’s in their last two games, one against the No. 1 Stanford Cardinal and one against the USC Trojans, they are more than positive going into the postseason ““ in fact, they see those two losses as a positive.
“It was tough losing our last two games, but I think it’s good going into playoffs; we have a clean slate. And it’s hard to have all these expectations on us from all over the country, so I think it’s kind of a positive thing,” said sophomore defender Ally Courtnall.
Coach B.J. Snow doesn’t want his team to focus on the losses, but the hard work that went into those games.
“The biggest part is, you can’t always look at results; you have to look at performance. We’ve done some good things and we’ve done some poor things. … It gives us a picture of the things we need to work on now,” Snow said.
UCLA will start postseason play on Saturday at Drake Stadium against Wisconsin, who the Bruins beat 2-0 in August.
“It’s cool because we know how they’ve played before, but it’s like us ““ we know we’ve changed a lot from the beginning of the season. It’s interesting no matter what,” said senior midfielder Chelsea Cline.
The Bruins recieved hefty recognition this week from the Pac-12, with eight players on All-Conference teams and senior forward Zakiya Bywaters garnering Pac-12 Player of the Year honors.
“I mean I think it’s always great to have other people acknowledge your success. … It’s a little bit of justification for the team in terms of the work, and I’m really proud of Z. She’s had quite a year, and she really deserved it,” Snow said.
Last year, San Diego upset UCLA in the second round of the postseason, a game that ended in penalty kicks.
But the 2012 Bruins do not see themselves as the same squad that fell so unexpectedly in the postseason.
“I feel like we’re a lot more confident this year,” Courtnall said. “We’re a lot closer, so I think that is going to help us a lot, as well as the loss. That gave us kind of a wake-up call going into the postseason.”
When the team goes into the postseason, its 15-2-2 overall record is wiped clean in the single-elimination tournament. Snow does not want those numbers to matter at all; rather, he would like to see his team focused on the work it has done all season long.
“It’s hard not to get caught up in results especially in the results-based business we’re in,” Snow said.
“But it doesn’t matter whether it’s a win or a loss. … You have to fix the parts of the games you have hiccups in. That’s the measuring stick at this point in time.”