After suffering its first defeat in six weeks at Stanford on Sunday, the No. 7 UCLA men’s soccer team is looking to take out its pent-up frustration on the Creighton Bluejays in Omaha, Neb., on Saturday.
“We’re looking to take some revenge out,” freshman midfielder Amobi Okugo said. “(We had) one loss, and we dropped five spots in the rankings, and a lot of our players are a little mad about that, so we’re looking to bounce back. We’re not used to losing.”
The Bruins (9-2-2, 4-1-2) sit atop the Pac-10 standings but are taking a break from conference play to travel to the Midwest, where they will face the Bluejays (6-3-4) for the third time in six years, the last edition of the match ending in a scoreless draw.
“(The game against Creighton in 2007) was a pretty challenging game,” senior midfielder Kyle Nakazawa said. “Any team that’s going to play us this year is going to get up for the game, just because of the fact that they’re playing UCLA.”
In the preseason, this match was shaping up to be a clash of titans, with UCLA ranked at No. 19 and Creighton at No. 6, but Creighton’s unexpected draw to Missouri State and loss to Portland knocked it out of the NSCAA Top 25 before the end of September. Meanwhile, the Bruins have shot up the rankings on a weekly basis, rising as high as No. 2 before their loss to the Cardinal on Sunday.
“This (past) weekend was a real big learning experience, kind of a reality check for us,” Nakazawa said. “We had a good run for six weeks, but there’s no perfect team in the world. We’re critiquing ourselves but not dwelling on the fact that we lost.”
Despite the setback in Palo Alto, UCLA coach Jorge Salcedo maintains that he has not altered anything in the Bruins’ practice regimen.
“I don’t think we really need to change much,” Salcedo said. “I think it’s a matter of taking the chances that we have. We’ve been scoring goals and creating opportunities, and we just need to make sure we continue to do that.”
The Bruins have 14 points from seven Pac-10 games, three points ahead of San Diego State (3-2-2 Pac-10) and four ahead of the Cardinal (3-3-1). The Aztecs head to East Lansing to take on Michigan State this weekend, so their total is set for the time being. Stanford could conceivably leapfrog the Bruins in the standings with wins over Oregon State and Washington this weekend. With only one other conference game after this weekend, however, Stanford’s potential lead would likely let up soon.
However, the Huskies (1-1-3) are lurking in the lower half of the standings with four points from only five games, and if they win their next three matches, then their Nov. 8 matchup with the Bruins at Drake Stadium could have great implications on who walks away with the Pac-10 championship at the end of the season.
“The Pac-10 is a really tough conference, so you never know what to expect,” Okugo said. “All I know is that our last three Pac-10 games are at home, and we’re really tough to beat at home.”
The Bruins have won all five games played in Drake Stadium this year, but their trek to Nebraska on Saturday will test their ability to play in a hostile environment, the likes of which they haven’t seen since their east coast swing during the first week of the season.