Whether it’s for their character or encouragement, every collegiate team relies on its upperclassmen.

They are the anchors, the experience and the teammates with the insight.

Their involvement is absolutely crucial to the success of the team, and when they are unable to come together, everyone takes a hit.

But after a 2-1 loss to Washington State on Friday and 1-1 tie against Washington on Sunday, ASU soccer coach Kevin Boyd was left to question his team’s veteran leadership.

“To sum it up, we had a poor weekend,” Boyd said after Sunday’s contest.

“We are being let down right now by our oldest players. Our oldest players had to be driving this forward, keeping the mentality — they’re not. We had a very poor first half on Friday and we had a very, very poor second half [Sunday].”

Though the Sun Devils carry just eight upperclassmen, the quality of the players is undeniable. It was their leadership that carried the 13 incoming freshman into the new season and enabled the team to notch a seven-game unbeaten streak during the nonconference season.

Still, after a slow start and three of four regular-season losses, Boyd said he is seeing a different team.

“I don’t know where everything we did in the beginning to get us going [is] — our gritty, our gutsy, it’s gone,” he said. “This is a different squad right now. I can’t figure out who they are. You rely on the base of your character to be driven from your oldest players, your juniors and seniors. We don’t have a lot of those, but I believe the quality of those people is very, very good. It’s gone right now. I don’t know where they are.”

Their four-game goal and hope for the playoffs has been quieted in the first two weekends of the conference season, and the winning mentality they had developed has been challenged by the tough competition of the Pac-10.

“They’re good,” freshman Bianca Doller said of teams in the conference.

“We play good teams. It is just disappointing because we are so even with them. We can compete just as well, and we should have won these past two games.”

The Sun Devils dropped contests to both UCLA and USC to open up Pac-10 play, and over the weekend, the Sun Devils missed more opportunities to break into the conference win column.

“We gave away a Friday game,” Boyd said. “We played so bad the first half that we gave it to them, and then the second game we are up 1-0 and we gave them the goal. We were awful in the second half.”

Both the Sun Devils and the Cougars remained scoreless in the first 30 minutes of Friday night’s game. However, WSU found a way to come back and scored two goals within four minutes of each other to take the 2-0 lead in the first half.

These two goals, in addition to the six other shots taken by Cougar players in the first half, gave WSU the 8-2 shot advantage in the period.

It wasn’t until the last 20 minutes of the second half that Doller was able put a goal on the board for the Sun Devils.

Sunday’s story was much of the same.

After another Doller goal in the first half, the Sun Devils were not able to answer the Husky goal, and after two overtimes, the game ended in a tie.

“We started off so gritty and so gutsy,” Doller said. “We hate to lose.

Now we have to find it this week in practice.

“We have to get our game back and get our effort back, because we should have won these games.”

Reach the reporter at emiley.darling@asu.edu.