With No. 1 Stanford visiting, the ASU women’s soccer team knew it had no margin of error if it wanted to hang with the Cardinal.
For the first quarter of the game ASU (6-8, 2-4 Pac-12) did just that. All 11 players pitched in on defense, denying Stanford an early goal. But it wasn’t enough, and the Cardinal would go on to take the 3-1 victory.
ASU had a few opportunities to take the lead early on, despite Stanford (14-0-1, 6-0 Pac-12) dominating the time of possession throughout the game.
In the 21st minute, sophomore midfielder Holland Crook found redshirt junior forward Courtney Tinnin on a counterattack in the open field, but Tinnin pushed the open shot wide right.
With the game still scoreless on both sides, ASU missed another golden opportunity to go take the lead.
“It’s just something we need to work on, putting away more of our chances in games like this,” ASU goalie Alyssa Gillmore said.
Later in the half, ASU made a couple of defensive breakdowns, allowing Stanford to jump ahead 2-0 at halftime.
In the 25th minute, Stanford’s Lindsay Taylor snuck behind ASU’s defense on a free kick. Taylor, who is Stanford’s leading goal scorer, headed the ball in past Gillmore.
Minutes later, sophomore defender Jasmine Roth tried to clear the ball, but her kick bounced off a Stanford player. Stanford forward Chioma Ubogagu, last week’s Pac-12 Player of the Week, recovered the loose ball and scored easily.
“Two kind of dumb errors resulted in us being down 2-0,” ASU coach Kevin Boyd said.
Despite the two Cardinal goals, senior defender Kari Shane felt her team was competing well against Stanford in the first half.
“When we had the ball, we were connecting,” Shane said. “We were getting shots off and we were coming out as a team. We had some really good opportunities in the first half.”
However, in the second half, Stanford kept possession and slowly wore down the Sun Devils.
"They keep the ball so well and they spread the field so big, you're going to have your players back," Boyd said. “There's no getting around it because if you don't go with them, they go free and they're good enough to find the open players and hold the ball and go at you.”
In the 78th minute, Scottsdale, Ariz. native Marjani Hing-Glover put Stanford up 3-0. Glover fielded a long pass from across the field and beat Gillmore to the right.
Despite trailing 3-0, ASU didn’t quit and avoided a shutout late in the game. In the 88th minute, a Stanford defender accidentally touched the ball with her hand inside the box.
The Sun Devils were awarded a penalty kick, and redshirt sophomore Nicki Stone scored on Stanford’s backup goalie.
Despite that second half goal, ASU had just two shots in the half, and six for the entire game. Stanford had 15 shots, with eight of them going on frame.
The game also was more physical in the second half, with ASU becoming increasingly desperate to get the ball back. ASU had four yellow cards – all in the second half, although one of them was on the team as a whole.
A season high 1,169 fans came out to see ASU in action, along with the Fox Soccer television cameras.
Stanford has now won 57 consecutive regular season games dating back to the 2008 season.
Reach the reporter at Justin.Janssen@asu.edu Click here to subscribe to the daily State Press newsletter.
