Before the year runs out, I wanted to share some parting thoughts on the 2024 Stanford men’s soccer season. The Cardinal finished the season 9-5-6 overall, falling to Ohio State in the Round of 16 of the NCAA tournament in penalty kicks 4-2 after a 0-0 draw. Stanford won their first match of the NCAA tournament also in penalty kicks 6-5 after it was tied 2-2.

For Stanford, I feel like on the whole, this season was a disappointment though not a total failure. Any time you reach the NCAA tournament and win a match, you obviously had a good season relative to other programs. But given that Stanford was at one point ranked in the top five in the nation, the way the season ended on the whole wasn’t what Stanford wanted.

When they defeated Notre Dame 3-2 in the first round of the ACC tournament at home on Wednesday, November 6th, that was the first win Stanford had since Friday, September 27th at Virginia in which they won 1-0. Following that win over Virginia they either had a loss or draw in their next six matches before finally getting back in the win column against the Irish. The 0-2 loss at San Francisco and 1-1 draw against Pacific were especially disappointing during that stretch.

Stanford’s biggest problem this year was their tendency to go into offensive lulls. Their 3-2 win over Notre Dame was the first 3+ goal match they had since September 10th at home against UC Riverside, which they won 3-0. They just struggled to put the ball in the back of the net and then on top of that, it just didn’t seem like the defense was as good as it was the previous season. If Zach Bohane didn’t find the back of the net, Stanford’s offense was often in real trouble.

As an extension of that, Stanford had a lot of close matches all season like their 2-1 win over San Jose State to start the regular season, their 0-1 loss to Denver (which in hindsight wasn’t a bad loss given Denver reached the Final Four), their 1-0 win at Notre Dame, their 1-0 win vs. UC Davis, their 1-0 win at Virginia, their 1-2 loss to North Carolina, and of course, their 0-1 loss to Cal. If you’re not going to be scoring a lot, you need your defense to be better and too often, their defense would have just enough lapses to cost them in the end.

Looking ahead to next season, Stanford is going to want to make sure they find better ways to score so they don’t have to rely too much on their defense. Goalkeeper Rowan Schnebly was fantastic with his seven shut outs and 0.98 goals allowed per match average. He was a major reason why Stanford was able to go as far as they did, but they need to get him more help. It’ll be interesting to see how Stanford does next season and whether or not they’re able to get their offense going with more regularity.

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