During the week after a surprising home defeat at the hands of Cal State Northridge on Saturday, the UCLA men’s soccer team was put through the proverbial wringer in practice by coach Jorge Salcedo.
Senior defender Shawn Singh said that while recent training sessions have been tougher than usual, the extra effort was necessary to avoid similar stumbles in the future.
“Practice has been pretty intense,” Singh said.
“We’re trying to work on marking up set pieces, defensive responsibilities and stuff like that.
“We’re trying to get that game out of our systems, and then move on from that.”
Even with the loss to the Matadors, the No. 10 Bruins are still sporting an impressive 10-4-1 record, and, perhaps more importantly, are a perfect 5-0-0 in the Pac-12.
Conference play starts up again this weekend at Drake Stadium and represents the Bruins’ last regular season home games.
UCLA takes on No. 20 Washington (10-3-2, 5-2-0 Pac-12) tonight and Oregon State (5-8-2, 3-3-1) on Sunday.
The Bruins were the last team to beat the Huskies, who kick-started an ongoing five-match winning streak immediately after UCLA thrashed them 4-1 in Seattle on Oct. 7.
The Huskies are tied with the Bruins with 15 points in Pac-12 play, although Washington has played seven conference matches to UCLA’s five.
“I think (Washington) is going to come back here and fight for everything they can,” Singh said.
“We know what to expect from Washington, and it’s definitely going to be a hard match, but hopefully we can stay compact defensively when we need to and keep the ball.”
UCLA’s game against Oregon State on Sunday will be a challenge of its own.
The Bruins escaped Corvallis, Ore. on Oct. 9 with a 2-1 victory secured by sophomore midfielder Victor Munoz’s 89th-minute game-winner.
But despite Munoz’s late heroics on that day, closing out games has become an issue that Salcedo saw fit to address during this week’s practices.
“In training (Wednesday), we went over scenarios where either we were winning for the last 10 minutes of the game or we were losing for the last 10 minutes of the game, so we could get more comfortable with those situations,” junior striker Chandler Hoffman said.
Hoffman leads the team with 13 goals in 15 games this season.
“We need to get better at managing the game,” he added.
With wins over Washington and Oregon State this weekend, the Bruins could put themselves in prime position to lock up the conference title.