On Friday, No. 3 Stanford women’s soccer defeated UC Santa Barbara 5-0 in the first round of the NCAA tournament. Stanford scored two goals in the first half and three goals in the second half. Stanford goalkeeper Haley Craig picked up the win in the net for the Cardinal with zero goals allowed and zero saves while UC Santa Barbara goalkeeper Maddie Buckley was awarded the loss for the Gauchos with 12 saves and four goals allowed.
BOX SCORE: UC Santa Barbara at Stanford-Friday, November 15th
“Yeah, great start to the playoffs, scored five goals, proud of the entire team,” Stanford head coach Paul Ratcliffe said after the match. “I thought as a group we played really well, created some good opportunities, and capitalized and scored some great goals.”
Stanford got off to an aggressive start with corner kicks at 1:45 and 8:05 while UCSB got a corner kick at 3:49. While neither corner kick led to a goal for Stanford, their early aggression would pay off as they found the back of the net off an own goal at 20:11. Andrea Kitahata helped set up the goal for Stanford as she fired a shot in the vicinity of the goal before it ricocheted off a UCSB player and into the back of the net. It was now a 1-0 lead for the Cardinal.
“Yeah, Dre has been exceptional all year,” Ratcliffe said of Kitahata. “She’s scoring goals, creating goals, but yeah, she’s been fantastic. She’s definitely a catalyst for us.”
“Just got the ball out wide, went after my defender in there, tried to take her on one v one, found the endline, saw a couple of my teammates in the box, tried to find one of them,” Kitahata recalled. “But lucky enough it hit off one of the UCSB girls. A goal is a goal at the end of the day. I found the back of the net.”
Shortly thereafter, Stanford would score again as Charlotte Kohler found the top right of the net off her right foot at 22:32, making it a 2-0 lead for the Cardinal. UCSB would get a corner kick at 30:27 after which Stanford got corner kicks at 35:44 and 40:13. 2-0 would remain the score at halftime.
In the second half, Stanford continued to put their foot on the gas as they quickly scored a third goal at 52:22 as Kitahata found the top left of the goal off her right foot off an assist from Eleanor Klinger and Charlotte Kohler.
“Yeah, I mean it was really all of Eleanor just to slip all through,” Kitahata said. “All I had to do was make an easy run, turn and shoot. So, my teammates made the job really easy, but lucky to get the goal in the end.”
Not long thereafter, Stanford scored a fourth goal as Lizzie Boamah found the top center of the goal at 53:46, making it a 4-0 lead for the Cardinal. At this point, Cagan Stadium was rocking with excitement.
“The message at halftime was two zero isn’t good enough,” Ratcliffe said. “We got to score the third and the fourth and the fifth if we can. But you don’t want to settle at 2-0 and let them score one and then it’s a tight game. So, definitely the message was let’s score the third and put the game away.”
Stanford would not be done scoring as Lumi Kostmayer scored at 77:51, finding the top right of the goal off her right foot off an assist from Mia Bhuta. That made it a 5-0 lead for the Cardinal, a lead which would end up being the final score.
“Yeah, we knew that a lot of other teams in the tournament have put up a bunch of numbers out there,” Kitahata said. “Lots of ones and two seeds. We wanna show that we’re up there with those ones and two seeds and we’re putting up those numbers and we’re an offense to be afraid of as well as getting that shut out in the defense.”
Casting aside the obvious importance that the NCAA tournament is win or go home, what makes this win huge for Stanford is the way that they won. To put up five goals and get their offense going gives them a lot of confidence going forward in the rest of the tournament. Especially with Jasmine Aikey and Kellie Pagador both out. That’s a testament to the depth of this Cardinal team.
“Critical,” Ratcliffe said of the importance of his bench. “I think we have really good depth on our squad as you saw tonight. They all came in and contributed in a positive way. And in the playoffs, it’s absolutely paramount that you have the depth coming in because next weekend we’ll have two games, Friday, Sunday. If we win the Friday game, so you have to be ready to make sure there’s plenty of people that can go in and contribute.”
“Yeah, I mean, we’ve taken a couple of knocks as a team and I’ve said it since the beginning of season, it’s the depth and our bench is really gonna make the season for us and it’s really showing,” Kitahata added. “Everyone’s stepping up.”
What also seemed to help Stanford was getting some time to rest and regroup. By not playing in the ACC tournament, Stanford was able to get a couple of weeks off and that seemed to really rejuvenate the team after a bit of a challenging stretch.
“Yeah, it’s been great to have a couple of weeks to really prepare the team for this game,” Ratcliffe said. “To work on the things that we need to work on and I thought they did a good job as a group applying all those things that they learned and we also were rested, so it’s a combination of both things. But yeah, fantastic result.”
“We came as a tournament team and unfortunately to not be in the ACC tournament,” Kitahata said. “But we really just got time to regroup and come together as a team and show that we’re ready for this.”
Up next for Stanford is a match against Connecticut on Friday at 1:00 PM PT on ESPN+ in Fayetteville, Arkansas. The Arkansas Razorbacks are the host team and will be facing Cal on Friday at 6:30 PM PT. The winners of both matches will face each other in the Sweet Sixteen.
“It is a new season when we get to the playoffs,” Ratcliffe said. “So building confidence right now and peaking right now is the best time to peak, so hopefully we’re starting to peak and we can have a good run here.”
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