• printer friendly
• mail this article
• iPod format
• digg

Photo

Photo

Sophomore Chad Barrett and the UCLA men’s soccer team will face LMU in the second round of

For many of the upperclassmen on the UCLA men’s soccer team, today’s match against Loyola Marymount seems very familiar. And it should.

It will be the second time in three years that these Bruins will face off against the Lions in the second round of the NCAA Championships.

Not that this is a bad thing. During its path to the 2002 NCAA title, UCLA ousted LMU, and this time around, the Bruins don’t expect anything different.

“There are a lot of things looking very similar to the year we won (the NCAA Championship),” senior defender Aaron Lopez said. “But for us to consider this season a success, we would have to win the championship again.”

“We got disappointed in the quarterfinals last year. This year is a revenge year for some of the guys that are still left on the team.”

But before the Bruins can seek vindication, they’ll be faced with a dilemma of avoiding an early exit against the Lions. In September, LMU battled the UCLA to a 0-0 tie even though the Bruins outshot their opponents 14 to 11.

For the better part of the first half of the season, the Bruins were plagued with an inability to convert goals. But that lull is nothing but an afterthought for the players.

“Our chemistry wasn’t the same,” Lopez said. “We played with a lot of individuality. We weren’t trusting the guy next to us.

“We play more as a team now (so) the result will be a lot different.”

With the offense peaking into the playoffs, the Bruins do not anticipate a similar scoring problem. Whereas earlier in the season, the offense depended solely on the production of senior forward Mike Enfield, the Bruins have found scorers throughout their lineup. In the last two games alone, four different Bruins have scored for a total of seven goals.

“We were having trouble scoring, but we’ve solved that problem within our team,” coach Jorge Salcedo said. “Our confidence in our attack is very high. We have a better understanding of what we need to do as a team every game.”

“We’re just capitalizing on our chances, chances that we’ve had all season but haven’t been able to convert,” Enfield said. “We’re finding the back of the net now.”

This recently prolific offense will face an LMU team that scrambled for a 1-0 win over Cal State Northridge, a team UCLA beat 3-1 in September. The Lions did not even manage to get off a shot during the first half of the game against the Matadors. Comparatively, the Bruins had seven shots on goal in the first half of their last game against UC Davis.

But regardless of how lopsided this matchup may look statistically, UCLA has learned the hard way the dangers of underestimating one’s opponent. Their 1-0 loss to Oregon State, the worst team in the Pac-10, cost the Bruins a top-four ranking going into the tournament. The defeat made the team realize the implications of every game.

“The next game we have, regardless of the opponent, is the most dangerous game,” Lopez added. “We take it game to game, so the most dangerous team is the next team we will face.”

The lesson of not underestimating lesser opponents was learned at the expense of guaranteed homefield advantage throughout the playoffs. Because the Bruins are hosting the semifinals and finals at the Home Depot Center in Carson, if the Bruins had received a top-four seed, they could have won the National Championship without ever leaving Los Angeles. Instead, they face the possibility of having to travel to play No. 3 Maryland in the quarterfinals.

Rankings aside, the most risky potential matchup for UCLA in its bracket may be No. 14 Creighton. The Bluejays handed the Bruins their first loss of the season, a 3-2 defeat in September.

No. 2 Indiana Hoosiers, the team that upset the top-ranked Bruins in 2003 in the quarterfinals, is in the bottom half of the bracket and would not meet the Bruins until the NCAA semifinals. Overall, UCLA has posted a 4-2-1 record against tournament teams this season, the lone loss coming to the hands of Washington, a team that was eliminated in the first round of play.

But as favorable as it will be to possibly play at home for the Final Four, the Bruins are careful to not take any game for granted.

“We’ve had talks these last few days about how excited we are about the potential of playing in the Final Four here in Los Angeles, but there is a lot of work ahead of us to get there,” Salcedo said. “We have to concentrate 100 percent on LMU and, getting past that, whoever wins between Boston College and St. Johns. It is going to be a heck of a second game for either us or LMU.”