The Bruins will kick off the NCAA tournament this week in search of something that quickly escaped their grasp a year ago.
Their second national title in program history.
After earning an at-large bid as the No. 1 seed in its quadrant of the bracket during the selection show this week, UCLA women’s soccer (17-2, 9-2 Pac-12) is set to take on Northern Arizona (10-5-4, 7-1 Big Sky) in the first round of the College Cup at Wallis Annenberg Stadium on Friday. The Bruins will be eyeing their second national championship in program history while hoping to avoid last season’s fate of a first-round exit.
Graduate student defender Madelyn Desiano said the team is excited by the challenge of preparing for a program the Bruins have never faced before.
“In a way, playing a team you don’t know anything about is fun,” Desiano said. “It’s a new way you can get back to the drawing board. We’re going to watch a ton of film and just find a way to break this team down.”
The blue and gold took two losses on the season within the last month but held steady at the top of the national rankings and now have earned a favorable matchup against Northern Arizona. The Lumberjacks qualified for the tournament after winning both the Big Sky regular season and tournament championships for the first time in program history.
Despite this being its first time back at the tournament since 2014, Northern Arizona enters Wallis Annenberg Stadium on Friday riding the fourth-longest active winning streak in the NCAA.
After last season’s upset loss to UC Irvine at home in the tournament’s opening round, graduate student forward Ally Cook, who received All-Pac-12 third-team honors on Tuesday, discussed what lessons the team has taken from that disappointing defeat a year ago.
“That (loss) still lingers a bit,” Cook said. “You cannot take any team for granted, and every game you gotta be putting your best foot forward. … It’s staying in the back of the minds just as a reminder.”
But in the time since the Anteaters knocked the Bruins out of title contention, a lot has changed in Westwood. The blue and gold has brought in a new coaching staff led by Margueritte Aozasa, who on Tuesday became the first rookie coach in conference history to win Pac-12 Coach of the Year. Under her leadership, the Bruins posted their best winning percentage since 2014 and had a total of eight players selected to All-Pac-12 teams.
Aozasa noted the intensity of the team’s level of preparation ahead of its matchup on Friday.
“Our job as a staff is to make sure that the team feels overprepared,” Aozasa said. “So being ready to play against different strategies or tactics that NAU might come with – being very sharp on set pieces, defending counter attacks. We’ll work on that all week.”
Despite being one of the winningest programs of the last 10 years, the 2013 championship still stands as the lone national title in the annals of UCLA women’s soccer history.
Madelyn Desiano said she, alongside her Bruin teammates, intends to change that this year.
“We’re just going to internalize this tournament and make it about us,” Desiano said. “The only team we have to worry about – the only team we have to focus on – is ourselves, and if we do that, we’re going to play our style of soccer. We’ll play for each other, and we’ll win a national championship.”
UCLA will kick off against Northern Arizona from Wallis Annenberg Stadium on Friday at 6 p.m.
Comments are closed.