On Friday, No. 22 Stanford men’s soccer fell to Cal at home by a final score of 1-0 to finish the regular season. Cal defender Kevin Carmichael scored the lone goal for the Golden Bears while goalkeeper Marco Brougher picked up the win in the net with four saves and zero goals allowed. Stanford goalkeeper Rowan Schnebly was awarded the loss with three saves to go along with the goal he allowed. Cal improves to 6-7-2 overall and 2-4-2 in the ACC while Stanford falls to 8-4-4 overall and 3-2-3 in the ACC.
BOX SCORE: Cal at Stanford-Friday, November 1st
“It was a really exciting game of soccer and honestly they just launched the ball at us throughout the entire game and it was just really difficult to deal with,” Stanford head coach Jeremy Gunn said after the match. “And so I think as a staff I think we got our tactics completely wrong and we allowed them to keep launching the ball at us, so we’ll take responsibility for the game today.”
Cal was very aggressive out of the gates with four shots in the first eleven minutes of the match. Rowan Schnebly was under fire and did a great job of keeping balls out of the net. Stanford had corner kicks at 28:05 and 31:10 while Cal had corner kicks at 41:19 and 42:16. Stanford did have a good opportunity for a goal at 31:06 as Nik White fired a shot that was saved by Cal and credited as a team save. The ball nearly went into the goal, but Cal found a way to collectively keep it out. It would remain tied 0-0 at halftime.
In the second half, Stanford had corner kicks at 45:23 and 47:48 after which Alfredo Ortiz of Cal as called for a yellow card at 48:49. The longer it remained tied 0-0, the more intense and chippy it would become. Cal had a corner kick at 55:36 after which Stanford had a corner kick at 56:18. It felt like a goal was going to be scored, but it was hard to tell which team would get one to fall.
In the 68th minute, Cal nearly had a goal as a shot by Allan Juarez went off the top of the cross bar and out. Cal was continuing to apply the pressure. After a few more yellow cards against both teams, Cal got a corner kick at 79:37. That would lead to the only goal of the night as Kevin Carmichael found the bottom right of the goal off his left foot off an assist from Kieran Serra. That made it a 1-0 lead for Cal. A lead that would hold until the match ended.
For Stanford, this was a painful loss. They were in desperate need of getting a win after some rough outings and to get shut out at home by your rival is about as rough as it gets. They had their chances, but their inability to score continued all while giving Cal too many opportunities.
“We’ve played great throughout the season,” Gunn said. “All that changed was that a couple close games didn’t go our way. One of the games we had 30 shots and didn’t score. And so it was not too much to over analyze. We’re in very very tough competition and there aren’t any easy games to be played and so I don’t feel that there’s a ton that has changed or a ton that needs to change. We just have to get a little bit fresher and a little bit sharper in a couple of departments.”
As for Cal, they should feel good about this win. They fought hard and showed why they are a tough team to beat. While their record isn’t pretty, they’re a scrappy team that plays a brand of soccer that made things tough on Stanford all night long.
“This is a very different game than any of the other games we’ve been in,” Gunn said of facing Cal. “Ten years ago, people used to talk about Cal being a beautiful soccer team. They were very, very, very effective tonight. They’ve got two, actually they’ve got three, very strong athletic forwards and they launched the ball at them all night long and it worked for them. So congratulations to them.
“They put us under enough pressure to win the game. And that’s where I think we should have cut it off at the source more. We were allowing them to deliver the ball, worrying about where the ball was going rather than stopping the ball at the source.”
Up next for Stanford is a home match against Notre Dame in the ACC tournament on Wednesday. That will begin at 6:00 PM PT on ACCNX.
“No, it will be exciting,” Gunn said of the ACC tournament. “We’ll be in a conference playoff game on Wednesday, I believe at home. I think we already knew that before the game. And so, I’ve not seen who the opponent is yet, so we’ll look at that and get ready for that straight away.”
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