ASU Soccer: How ASU competed with the No. 1 team in the nation

(Photo: Nicholas Badders/WCSN)

The Arizona State Sun Devils are halfway through the 2017 season, playing their third ranked opponent in the past week. Thursday night, the team competed with NCAA ranked No. 1 University of California, Los Angeles, but fell short with a 3-0 loss.

ASU was coming off a 6-0 loss in Palo Alto against No. 2 Stanford on Sunday afternoon. Head coach Graham Winkworth made some apparent changes for the UCLA game.

Mentality

Losing to an opponent six to zero can be extremely demoralizing for a team. It can also be difficult coming off that loss and then having to turn around to play the number one team in the nation.

“We didn’t want Stanford to beat us twice, it was very demoralizing on Sunday and we could have been easily down for this game,” said Winkworth.

However, the Sun Devils overcame both of these hurdles. They put all hard feelings aside and pushed forward.

The team carried themselves on the field with pride and worked together to hold down the pitch as long as possible until UCLA scored in the 19 minute of the game. Even after the goal the Sun Devils powered through, not giving up.

“I think we did spectacular, I am very, very, proud of this team, I think that we fought the whole game,” senior Jazmarie Mader said. “We had a few slip ups and we’re a new team with a new coach and we are still learning and I think we are a team to be reckoned with in the upcoming years.”

Sophomore Christina Edwards felt that the team played with more heart than they did on Sunday.

She also mentioned that being in the Pac-12 conference, playing against the best in the country, you might not always be the best player out there but if you want it more you can fight for the win. She hoped that her desire trickled down to her teammates to want it more.

The players had a phenomenal response to Winkworth’s “We don’t want Stanford to beat us twice.” Sometimes, teams need to lose by a decent amount of goals to grow as a program.

“I know we are on the right foot and on the right track,” said Edwards.

Shutting Down the Midfield

Besides the mentality that the Sun Devils came out with, they changed up their tactics for UCLA.

ASU tried to shut down the UCLA midfield by simply forcing the Bruins’ midfielders to play the ball out wide. By forcing them to make the pass out wide, it gave ASU a better opportunity to hold them down defensively.

“We wanted to force them wide so then they either had to play line and we could cut off on the line or have them play a big ball across, a switch, to where we could intercept it,” said Edwards.

For much of the night, the Sun Devils did a decent job closing key players down in the midfield.

However, the first goal UCLA scored, the Bruins broke down the ASU midfield and defense which lead to the first goal of the night for junior forward Hailie Mace.

Edwards also mentioned that shutting down the midfield helped the Sun Devils contain the technical skills of UCLA players.

Shutting the midfield down helped limit the amount of goals the Bruins had for the night, which was only three.

The Devils move forward to their second game this weekend against No. 6 USC on Sunday in Tempe at 1 p.m.

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