There's no way UCLA was going to win tonight without several key players out. To beat this year's Stanford team, you need to have UCLA like talent, and have them all available to play, and for all of them to bring their "A-Game". For the most part, the players who played did bring it. But they were missing too many great players.
Its not always about talent. In this game, the better team loses more often than in any other sport i can think of.
I think you are playing well. Problem is College soccer REALLY favors counter attacking, physical teams. The set up from teh schedule, to referees to sub rules takes teams like UCLA who are VERY technically competent and minimizes that advantage. Im not talking about Stanford and a handful of others, but that College soccer. Without Mace, you lose a lot of that physicality and imo, she is not one of your 4 best players !! She is your most indispensable though. Keep the faith, you guys are a great team !!
LOL, they're going nowhere in the near future. Other than the mountain top of course, which will probably happen again. They'll win at least 1 or 2 more titles in the next 3 to 4 years, at the very least.
Yes, it is true that Stanford has corralled the top talent for the past 5 years (2014 -2018) and was virtually tied with UCLA and UNC in 2013, so call that 6 years if you wish. I suspect that coaches and fans of many teams are not particularly happy about such dominance, but that's how the cookie crumbles these days. Who knows when a different paradigm will be evident? FYI for Looking ahead, I'll post the prospects at this time for 2019 and 2020 tomorrow on a 2019 recruiting thread .
I would really appreciate if someone can upload the UCLA game against Oregon on YouTube? Pretty please!
We face NC State on Sunday in sweet 16. I originally had Santa Clara in my bracket because I thought for sure they would make it farther than they ended up doing. Their game against NC State was pretty much their offense trying to go against NC's strong defense and not being able to make anything happen. Ultimately it goes to double over-time and PKs to determine who went through. NC State won after Santa Clara's goalkeeper was up(really Santa Clara?) and couldn't place the ball on target. For UCLA, we are glad to see that we won't be facing Santa Clara on Sunday and instead we are facing another team I'm confident we will beat despite them having a good defense. From here on out, not sure we are going to still keep beating teams 5-0 but as long as we win that's all that matters. Regardless of whether we win or lose, this will be our last game at Wallis Annenberg Stadium. If we manage to go through, we are heading prematurely over to North Carolina to face UNC in the quarter-finals. We took a similar route a few years back then we ended up beating UNC and winning the whole tournament. Not saying it will happen this time around of course but that we've been in similar circumstances before. I will say this one last thing to our future ACC teams, you have to score probably 2-3 goals against us to beat us. We will score at least 2 against any team in this country and it's extremely difficult to shut down our offense. You have officially been warned.... GOOOOoooo Bruins!
I watched the few minutes of UCLA's game against Minnesota--long enough to see that the Gophers started very tentatively, perhaps intimidated by the task at hand, and to see the Minnesota keeper turn what should have been an easy save into an early first UCLA goal. That was a quick indication that the match was not going to be competitive.
Well I'm off to the match, I hope we can pull off a W tonight against NC State. I'm be the one in the stands with a bruins sweater and scarf in brutal 60 degree weather screaming my heart out.
Well for the 3rd time in a row in the NCAA tournament, we beat the opponent 5-0. I always think the 5-0 scoreline will end at some point in the bracket and the next game is with UNC so I have a feeling our shutout is going to come to an end. We aren't celebrated on defense and UNC has the talent to take advantage of that. We no longer have our matches at home anymore as we are now facing a number 1 seeded team so we have to make our journey to Chapel Hill but the journey was going to end at Chapel Hill anyways so it's all good. The cool thing is for some reason, if we pull off the win, we don't have to travel so we can chill in the area. I have high hopes for our girls, I'm prepared for the loss but I'm expecting a W because we are good enough. Those are my two cents. Also forgot to credit our football team for beating USC this weekend!!! Bragging rights!
Welp UCLA didn't make it to the College Cup this year but they fought every game hard and still continue to be a hardy opponent to whomever comes their way. We will have Flemming, Sanchez back with us next season. Mace is graduating and moving on to hopefully professional opportunities. We are getting a new crop of offensive players that I'm not totally sold on yet but who knows, we seem to keep our strength. As for me, I'll be rooting for the underdog the rest of the way for fun. Good luck to the rest of the teams and hope to see you all next year in another exciting division one season. Go Bruins!
No Jessie Fleming on the All-American list? Seems like a real miss. Is there a minimum number of games that must be played to qualify? I think she only played 11 of 22.