(Photo via Hailey Rogalski/WCSN)
In a closely contested match, the Arizona State Sun Devils (6-0-2, 2-0-0) defeated the California Golden Bears (5-3-3, 0-2-0) 2-1. Team captain and graduate midfielder Alexia Delgado stole the show again, scoring a spectacular free kick and setting up graduate midfield partner Eva van Deursen, who scored another match-winning goal in addition to her winner from last week at Colorado.
The first half started off lively and end-to-end. Both teams created a significant amount of chances, but it would be California who struck first, after senior forward Kelly Roy converted from the penalty spot 11 minutes in, following a handball foul from the Sun Devils. The Golden Bears took control of the match for a few minutes following up the goal until ASU found a way to turn the game back to square.
Delgado would be the one to even up the score just ten minutes after the penalty. Graduate forward Nicole Douglas won the ball back in a dangerous area and earned a freekick for her side, just outside the 18-yard box. Delgado curled a freekick up and over the wall into the back of the net.
“As soon as I saw there was a freekick outside the box I was just really confident, and those are the freekicks I’ve been practicing,” Delgado said. “The previous years I’ve had similar freekicks from the same area and I was not lucky enough to score, It pretty much had to be a perfect shot and it was.”
Delgado’s strike put her goal tally at 4 on the season, a career-high in single-season goals.
The rest of the first half was a battle from both ends, while the tempo began to slow down in the latter stages, neither side was giving much away defensively and big chances were few and far between.
The second half started identically to the end of the first, both sides got into a chess match, with California dominating a lot of possession. Neither side wanted to give up a big chance and players like fifth-year midfielder Paige Metayer and junior midfielder Jazmine Wilkinson began to grow into the game, controlling the midfield.
After 73 minutes of back-and-forth action, Delgado dispatched a cross to the back post where she found van Deursen, ready to slot the ball into the back of the net, yielding her consecutive game-winning goals in Pac-12 play, showing an incredible ability to find space whilst making late runs into the 18-yard box.
“Eva’s got a wonderful habit of being like Frank Lampard and making those late runs into the box,” head coach Graham Winkworth said.
van Deursen credits her movement to her natural instincts around the penalty area and understanding her teammates’ quality to find her.
“I think it’s like Instinct, when I see Alexia has the ball in that position I know she has a wonderful pass in her,” van Deursen said. “I know she can perfectly place it where it needs to be, yea the timing of the run is super important because I remember scoring a goal here which was offside so that’s also something to keep in mind. It’s an instinct when you make a run you know you’re going to score.”
van Deursen now has five goals on her season tally and three in the last pair of matches.
This win sets up the Sun Devils nicely with two massive contests coming up in the next week. This Sunday ASU host the Stanford Cardinal, who was once ranked as high as No. 9 in the country, then the Sun Devils will travel to Los Angeles to take on the No. 1 ranked UCLA Bruins.
“We’ve got a very positive result with a very average performance tonight, I don’t think we’ve been that great,” Winkworth said. “… The teams are getting harder and harder every opponent is of a higher standard.”
Winkworth has also expressed he doesn’t care about rankings as long as his team is on top by the end of the season.
“They probably looked at our schedule and said ‘they haven’t played anybody,'” Winkworth said. “But I find that disrespectful to teams like Denver, Boise, and South Dakota State, who are gonna be challenging for their conference championship. I think we’ve gone on the road against very good teams, not gonna be too many teams that win up in Boulder, and not many teams that are gonna win against California.”
