Halftime 0-0 at Washington. Buffs are doing a lot of defending and doing it well. Shots 5-4 Huskies, on goal 1-0 Buffs. Kayleigh Webb went out in the 13th minute, I don't know why.
That's RPI #10 Washington. On the road. Should put our RPI into the twenties? Shots 18-11 Huskies, on goal 4-4, corner kicks 5-3 Buffs, fouls 16-7 Huskies. Heroic defense? You can't imagine. Washington had an edge in the run of play in the first half but could not get a shot on goal (we only had one). They came out on fire after halftime and were all over us for about 20 minutes, during which their GK made the save of the game on Taylor Kornieck's header. Kayleigh came back in and we found our offense for 15 minutes and were making a game of it. A free kick from the side resulted in the ball pinballing off a bunch of legs in front of the goal and out it came to Hannah at the top of the box and her first career goal was pretty huge. This of course got the Huskies' attention and they pushed at us very hard but the defense held and with a couple of minutes left, Tessa Barton killed a lot of time in the corner with a sled full of Huskies on her back. They got the ball back with about a minute left but a time consuming foul (they fouled a lot) and a couple of long clearances preserved the win. My God, we needed that.
Tough as nails? Nails are cotton candy compared to Kayleigh. When she came in, the Buffs turned the game around.
.@hannahsharts21 with her first goal as a Buff! pic.twitter.com/BDX0qJGvox— Colorado Buffaloes Soccer (@CUBuffsSoccer) November 1, 2019
Get you a squad like ours#GoBuffs pic.twitter.com/mzHG1plHfm— Colorado Buffaloes Soccer (@CUBuffsSoccer) November 1, 2019
Once again, the replay of the goal tells me how feeble my memory is. Outstanding free kick from Stephanie Zuniga, GK punched it way up in the air, what goes up must come down and when it did four defenders didn't clear. Hannah was well inside the box and it came right to her, a defender fell as she blocked the first shot but right back to Hannah, second shot found net. Around the Pac-12: USC 1, at Oregon 0, The Trojans were dormant in the first half but came to life after halftime and got one in the 78th minute. Washington State 4, Utah 1. Utes pulled within 1, but WSU scored a minute later and three minutes after that to put it away. UCLA 4, at Oregon State 0. Bruins firing on all cylinders. But credit OSU for having a season massively better than last year. Cal 3, Arizona 0. Shots 19-7 Arizona, on goal 11-4 Arizona. Not the first game like this for Cal, the other guys get the statistics, Cal gets the goals. Their freshman goalkeeper is outstanding. Stanford 3, Arizona State 0. Not that close. Shots 36-1, on goal 9-0, corner kicks 9-0, Stanford clinched a tie for the conference, then won it outright when Washington lost.
Very important win for the Buffs, obviously. But to make it really matter they need to win at Pullman on Sunday. In the second half CU was better able to possess and move the ball out of the back which was important in limiting the Huskies ability to generate attacks. And yes, Kayleigh is invaluable to the team's success this season. Hope she can go tomorrow.
Morgan Weaver 4, Buffs 1 Well, we had to have a win this weekend and we got it. Didn't get two. I'm not 100% convinced that we're in yet, but we certainly will be with a win at Utah. I missed the game, it was Colorado Mesa's Senior Day. Washington State scored in the third minute, then blew it open right after halftime. Same player scored all four. oops, that wasn't supposed to post yet Taylor got one back with an assist from Stephanie, but that's all we could do. Shots were 24-7, on goal 11-5, corner kicks 10-3. Off to Salt Lake City, will probably drive up on Wednesday and play tourist on Thursday before the game. Good weather expected ... sunny, high 60, low mid-30's. Last time I went there in 2011 to see us play it rained in the first half and snowed in the second. A lot.
Around the Pac-12: Oregon State held USC to 11 shots, four on goal, but couldn’t do much themselves and lost 1-0. Chippy? 27 fouls, 4 yellow cards. Oregon held UCLA to one goal but was outshot 20-4 in the 1-0 loss. Washington rebounded from the loss to Colorado, sort of. They outshot Utah 24-5. Allowed Utah only one shot on goal. Corner kicks 12-2. That’s the good news. The bad news? The shot, singular, went in. 1-0 Utah. So Utah had the same weekend in Washington that we did, lost to WSU 4-1 and beat UW 1-0. Stanford had another shot explosion, 31-8 over Arizona, on goal 12-3. But credit the Wildcats for ending Stanford’s eight game shutout streak. Only the third team to score twice on Stanford, Santa Clara and USC did before the shutout streak. It took Arizona State 39 seconds to score on California. Cal tied it up near the end of an evenly played half. Cal owned the second half (shots 9-0) but it took a penalty kick for them to win 2-1.
The new RPI: The Buffs and Utah had the exact same results, Buffs up 5, Utes up 0. Last year we had seven conference wins but didn't get into the playoffs because the RPI wasn't good enough. This year we have the RPI but the most conference wins we can get is four. Hopefully The Committee is totally obsessed with RPI, only. If Oregon State beats Oregon and we lose to Utah, we will finish tenth in the conference. The best we can do is seventh, and that requires us to beat Utah and Arizona to lose to Arizona State.
Speaking of our neighbors to the north (not Canada ... much closer), Bill Hempen was just named Coach of the Year in the Mountain West Conference. Colorado State is 12-5-2, with an RPI of 87, best in the conference. A season-ending 0-0 tie with Wyoming left them 7-3-1 in the conference and cost them the two points they needed to tie Boise State and San Diego State in the standings. They open tournament play Tuesday in Boise against Fresno State.
Took to the outdoors for this week's TWICS#GoBuffs pic.twitter.com/ILL2nKE6th— Colorado Buffaloes Soccer (@CUBuffsSoccer) November 6, 2019
Utah 1, Buffs 0 It was not that close, except the final 20 minutes. Too little, too late. Utah were faster, they passed way better, they were just better for 70 minutes and that was all they needed. Shots were 16-6, on goal 9-1. There is belief that we were a lock for the playoffs no matter what happened tonight. Probably at BYU, but if Denver beats South Dakota State there on Saturday, they will be in and I'd imagine we would play them. I'd love to be wrong, but I am not confident. We will finish tenth in the Pac-12. Didn't get back to the room until midnight and it's been a long day. More tomorrow (Friday).
The first few minutes were back and forth, then it became pretty much all forth for Utah. They were attacking with five, sometimes six, and getting people and the ball into the box. You could see the goal coming. We were sending long balls with very limited impact. Roo did get herself and the ball into the left corner a couple of times but couldn't connect with anybody in a position to shoot. Then, with less than a minute left in the half, we got the first corner kick of the game. Kelsey put it right in front of the goal high enough for Taylor's head to send it into the bottom of the crossbar, what fraction of an inch would have had it land on the other side of the line? We have had games this year where the first half wasn't what we wanted but we came out on fire after halftime. Alas, the team that came out on fire wasn't us. JJ made the save of the game a couple of minutes into the half and Utah missed a couple of fairly open shots. But we cut back on the long balls and were attempting to advance on the ground, not successfully for a while, but late in the third quarter we got an attack going and Roo got our shot on goal. Early in the fourth quarter, the game shifted. I don't know if we played with more urgency, or if Utah realized they weren't going to get the second goal and played to protect the lead they had, or some of both, or something else, but the Buffs started to push forward with several players and we had the ball a LOT. But with all that possession, we couldn't get a shot off. We amassed six shots total, including the first three of the game in the first six minutes. Utah took the next seven. We didn't take another one until Taylor's header at the end of the half. Taylor took our fifth shot in the 57th minute, three minutes later Roo got our shot on goal, that's six, and that's all we got even though we had the ball pretty much the entire final 20 minutes. Utah took their last of sixteen shots in the 71st minute and after that, nobody shot. Roo came in as a substitute at Washington State, I didn't know that because I missed the game, so I was REALLY surprised to see her start. I guess somebody didn't want her to redshirt, could have been her, I don't know. Or maybe she wasn't eligible to redshirt? A mystery to me. But she played well. The regular season for the conference is finished. We tied for ninth with Oregon State, but they beat us so we finish tenth.
Elsewhere, Arizona had the run of play against Arizona State, corner kicks were 14-1, but they missed a lot of shots and finally scored in the 83rd minute to keep ASU winless in the conference. Cal did not miss a shot against Stanford. They took one, it was on goal. How good is Stanford? It took them all of a minute to score, final 4-0. How one-sided was it? Shots were 39-1, on goal 17-1. Oregon State delighted the home crowd by scoring in the 87th minute to beat Oregon 1-0 in a fairly evenly played game. In Seattle, Washington State had an edge in all of the statistics except one. Shots 17-11, on goal 5-4, corner kicks 13-3, fouls 17-9. One of those 17 was in the wrong place, and Washington made the penalty kick in the 82nd minute to win 1-0. Their coach is retiring after 26 years. No question about who's number 2. USC scored five minutes in, and then scored on every shot on goal they took. Except they only took one more. The final score of 4-2 does not reflect how much UCLA owned the game. Shots 27-4, on goal 14-2, corner kicks 11-0. USC and California are good teams. This season I never expected USC to be outshot 27-4. And I still can't wrap my head around Cal being outshot 39-1.
I'm still convinced she isn't done yet. Reign FC would be great fun for her I'm sure if she was interested....
UCLA is running on all cylinders. They are going to be a tough out for anyone. USC missing leading scorer and 4 yr starting 6 made the coach have to make some calculated shuffles in player position to put a different look out there but UCLA was too much. Congrats to the Bruins
I’m actually surprised USC was able to keep the game that close with players they were missing. Hope they will be back for the tournament
More elsewhere ... Denver 1, South Dakota State 1, Jackrabbits won on penalty kicks. Not a lot of offense, shots were 7-7 at the end of regulation, wound up 10-7 Denver, on goal 5-2. First time for SDSU in the playoffs since eleven years ago in their first year of eligibility at D-1. Their first opponent was a thundering herd of prairie animals, and was the occasion for my first visit to Minnesota. That was four firsts in two sentences. Buffs were ranked #14 I think, Shots were 22-10, on goal 10-3, corner kicks 6-0, all Buffs. But the Jackrabbits had a goalkeeper. Twin sisters from Littleton, Colorado wanted to play for the Buffs, and were told there were no more scholarships available. There weren't, we had a large freshman class coming in. Of the 300 teams playing Division 1 women's soccer, they wound up at South Dakota State, their father told me how/why, I don't remember (happens more often lately) but they did, and were instrumental in the successful transition from D-II. The goalkeeper made ten saves, and you don't need to ask who stole the ball from our best defender and scored in the 14th minute. I wanted SDSU to be in the playoffs, but the other one. I am retired from and got my master's degree at San Diego State University, and the Aztecs just lost the Mountain West championship to Boise State which puts the Broncos in the playoffs. I want the Broncos in the playoffs, but the other one, my undergraduate degree is from Santa Clara.
Nice! I did my undergrad at UC Santa Cruz, so not too far from Santa Clara. I don’t think the banana slugs are much of a sporting university so I’m not sure how they do woso wise but ultimate frisbee was a thing. I did a Masters at UCLA and became a Bruin, rearranging my schedule to try and fit those Thurs night games, which were always hard to attend due to my courses and work aways occupying that busy day. The funny thing was I worked closely with USC while going to UCLA because the expo line sorta connects both schools so I didn’t feel the rivalry as much as the undergrads. My cousin went to USC and she and her kids stopped talking to me when I told her I’m going to UCLA so some people take the rivalry too seriously. I’m not a college football fan so maybe that’s it. Anyway, we will see how far we can go. Post season is always dramatic...