EDWARD LIN Forward Stephanie Rigamont
goes up for a header against Texas A&M’s Juli
Goin. NCAA Third Round UCLA 4 Texas
A&M 0
By Jeff Agase
Daily Bruin Contributor
If there were any doubters about the place of the UCLA
women’s soccer team among the elite national programs, they
were quieted in the first half and silenced in the second half on
Sunday.
The No. 10 and sixth-seeded Bruins (17-3-1) pummeled No. 9 Texas
A&M (18-7-0) 4-0 at Drake Stadium behind three second half
goals.
“I wouldn’t say that anyone is faster than this
team,” Texas A&M head coach G. Guerrieri said.
“Today we came up against a team that was more athletic than
us and very good and more deserving of the win.”
After a sluggish start to the match that saw neither team able
to consistently possess the ball, the Bruins started to take
control of the game with crisp, on-target passes that penetrated
the A&M defensive front.
Aggie keeper freshman Esther Thompson was up to the task of
facing two early Bruin scoring chances, one by junior Breana Boling
in the 14th minute and one by senior Tracey Milburn in the 18th
minute.
Junior forward Stephanie Rigamat found something for which
Thompson had no answer. At the 23:30 mark, Rigamat faced a
four-on-one from the Aggie defense but managed to get around two
defenders and open a miniscule angle to the net. Rigamat found the
only place she could have put her shot.
“I saw the keeper, and I just somehow slipped it by
her,” Rigamat said. “I took the little angle that I had
and I prayed that it went in and it did.”
The Aggies were unable to muster a shot until the 38:20 mark and
only managed six shots on the day.
UCLA head coach Jillian Ellis was extremely pleased with the
team’s defensive performance, as her Bruins registered their
14th shutout in 21 games.
“When you only give up six or seven goals in 20-something
games, that’s a tremendous statistic. They’re just
solid. They really understand the zone,” Ellis said.
The Aggies came out in the second half with a drastic increase
in intensity but started to take chances with 20 minutes remaining.
At the 71:00 mark, Boling sent a beautiful cross to Rigamat, who
scored her second goal of the game to put the Bruins up by two.
In the 79th minute freshman Sarah-Gayle Swanson easily beat the
A&M keeper with a goal and senior Tracey Milburn iced the
proverbial cake with a goal in the final 30 seconds of the
game.
The Bruins advance to the quarterfinals of the NCAA Tournament
and are the only Pac-10 team remaining in the field. They will
travel to South Carolina to take on Clemson in a remtach of their
first game of the season, which the Bruins lost 1-0 on
Clemson’s home field.
“We’re light years ahead of where we were when we
played them, but they also have twenty games under their
belt,” Ellis said. “(Last time) it could have gone
either way ““ in the first half they outplayed us, but in the
second half we feel we outplayed them.”