On Sunday, No. 6 Stanford women’s soccer and Pittsburgh had a 1-1 tie at Cagan Stadium on The Farm. Stanford midfielder Mia Bhuta scored for the Cardinal while Pittsburgh midfielder Keera Melenhorst scored for the Panthers. Stanford goalkeeper Haley Craig had four saves along with her goal allowed while Pittsburgh goalkeeper Ellie Breech had one save along with her goal allowed. Stanford is now 10-1-1 on the season and 2-1-1 in the ACC while Pittsburgh is now 7-3-2 overall and 1-2-1 in the ACC.
BOX SCORE: Pittsburgh at Stanford-Sunday, September 29th
“Yeah, a tough game,” Stanford head coach Paul Ratcliffe said after the match. “I thought we played strong. We didn’t capitalize on the chances we created, but overall it was a tough game. Full credit to Pittsburgh. I thought they played really hard and made it a difficult match for us.”
Both goals were scored in the first half and Stanford was the team to strike first. Pittsburgh did the first corner kick of the match at 7:33, but Stanford got the second corner kick at 17:37, scoring off that chance as Mia Bhuta found the bottom right of the goal off an assist from Jasmine Aikey.
“Yeah, fantastic corner kick by Jasmine Aikey,” Ratcliffe said of their goal. “And then Mia Bhuta with an incredible header. So, first class goal.”
The reverse then happened with the goal that Pittsburgh scored. Stanford got a corner kick at 21:18 but wasn’t able to score off that chance. As for Pittsburgh, they had a corner kick at 37:14 and then scored at 38:16 as Keera Melenhorst found the top right of the goal off her right foot to even up the match 1-1. At halftime, Stanford was outshooting Pittsburgh 5-4 while both teams were even with two corner kicks each.
In the second half, neither team scored, but Pittsburgh was putting more pressure on Stanford than Stanford was putting on them. While Stanford did have three second half corner kicks to Pittsburgh’s two, Pittsburgh outshot Stanford 9-5. Of those nine shots, four resulted in saves by Haley Craig, two of which came in the final two minutes of the match: 88:40 and 89:34.
The save at 89:34 was really close to going in as the ball appeared to bounce off the cross bar and barely out as Craig was able to secure the ball to keep it out of the net. Craig was phenomenal in this match as she’s been all season long.
“I feel like the whole game I was trying to keep my team out of trouble,” Craig said. “Pitt has a very offensive, a couple good strikers and we saw it in the first half. The goal they scored was great, so I was prepared for another really good target shot and it came upper corner and I had to push into, I think the cross bar and it bounced out. So, I was prepared for them to have much better shooting. Not every team has such great strikers and they were good.
“I think [as a goalkeeper] you have to be proud of yourself for doing your job to the best you can. I think having four shots on goal and or five shots on goal or whatever and I had four saves. The goal was great. Credit to them. I got a hand on it. But I think for me, I have to control what I can and I can’t control our team’s scoring as much as I wish I could, but I can control how many goals go in the back of the net and I feel like I did a relatively good job at that and our defense held strong.”
“Haley’s been outstanding all season,” Ratcliffe said of Craig. “And she had another great game today.”
For Stanford, they should be happy they didn’t lose this match given the pressure that Pittsburgh was putting on them. This could have easily been a late loss, so in that vein they should be exhaling after this result.
“I think it was a solid defensive effort,” Ratcliffe said of how his team defended. “I think we gave them way too much room to get chances, unfortunately. We should have stepped the line a little bit higher and been a little stronger. But ultimately, I thought they did a good job against a strong Pittsburgh team.”
“Yeah, I think minimizing what they’re good at,” Craig added of what worked well defensively. “They’re really good on transition and they’re really good at balls over the top. They have really strong and quick strikers that want to get in behind us. So I think our biggest thing when we went into halftime was prevent the long ball; keep their forwards from getting behind us. And I think we did a much better job of it in the second half than in the first half, but obviously they outshot us, which isn’t something that most teams do and that is something that we need to get back to work on. We have a one game next week, so we have plenty of time to fix what was going wrong.”
At the same time, Stanford had chances to win this match and had opportunities to take the lead late. In that sense, they should be kicking themselves a bit for not finding a way to come out on top.
“We need to learn from each game,” Ratcliffe said of what he told the team after the match. “You know, make sure we’re taking something away from this game and continue to improve and get better because the games will continue to get harder from here.”
“I think for us, finishing the opportunities we get,” Craig added. “We only got, I think ten shots and I think our conversion rate needs to be better. We’re not gonna get 35 shot games like sometimes you do in preseason games now that we’re in conference. So I think putting away one or two or three of the ten, that conversion rate will help us to really big things in the ACC.”
Up next for Stanford is a road match at SMU on Saturday, October 5th at 5:00 PM PT on ACCNX.
“I think it’ll be another difficult game like this one,” Ratcliffe said of facing the Mustangs. “We need to get used to the ACC compete level and we need to continue to grow and get stronger in that capacity...There’s a learning curve for all of us. We stylistically don’t know much about them, how they play other than you try to watch on video. But when you play them, you’ll learn so much more. So it’s just learning the different styles and how we can counter those styles and what we can do to benefit our team in those matches.”
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