The No. 3 UCLA women’s soccer team will have a chance to extend its eight-match win streak when the Bruins travel to Malibu today to play Pepperdine (6-3).

As the Bruins (8-1-1) play their last non-conference game before entering Pac-10 play at home against Arizona next week, they welcome the break from Sunday matches.

“Sometimes it’s planned, usually,” coach Jill Ellis said. “We’ve come through 10 pretty grueling games. After Friday, once they get some rest, their bodies will start to rejuvenate. It’s a big plus for us just to have one game this weekend.”

“We have our practices, we’ve just been taking it day-by-day,” sophomore defender Amelia Mathis added. “We’ve got a lot of bangs and injuries and whatnot. So we’re trying to get healthy through the week, but we’re doing a good job of getting us back together as a whole because there’s bangs here and there, but we’ll be together by Friday.”

The most recent and most serious of the Bruins’ injuries is redshirt senior Kara Lang’s season-ending re-tearing of the ACL in her right knee, which happened in the 21st minute of UCLA’s 2-0 victory against Cal State Northridge Friday.

“People are kind of low in energy,” junior midfielder Taylor Cochran said. “It kind of happens during the season, but I think having the Sunday off is going to be huge for us.”

UCLA holds an all-time advantage of 11-2-1 over the Waves, including a 12-game unbeaten streak.

“Same as every weekend, we go in, we don’t really focus on what opponent it is,” junior midfielder Elise Britt said. “Besides the formations ““ we just know what it is ““ we don’t really focus on, “˜Oh, this is going to be a really hard team or this is going to be an easy team.’ It’s just like, “˜This is our next game, we have to do what we do.’ We have to play our best and keep improving every game.”

Ellis said that Pepperdine’s soccer field is slightly smaller, so the Bruins have been practicing and scrimmaging with a shorter field to get used to the size of the field they will see in Malibu.

Ellis also added that she had been impressed with the freshmen recently. In UCLA’s 3-1 win against UC Santa Barbara last weekend, the Bruins started four freshmen, including midfielder Zakiya Bywaters, midfielder Chelsea Cline, defender Lucretia Lee, and midfielder/forward Ahsha Smith.

“We saw some big strides in some of our freshmen over the course of last weekend,” Ellis said. “I think they’re excited to play.”

According to the coach, if the Bruins can take care of the ball and execute on set pieces, they will be a hard team to defend.

“At this point, the focus is still on ourselves,” Ellis said. “But it’s our last tuneup for Pac-10s, so I think the players are ready. … We’re excited for Pepperdine. It’s a one-game weekend ““ we know it’s going to be a difficult opponent, we’ll need to play well to get the result.”

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