Senior midfield Blair Alderson keeps the ball away from Colorado during the game Friday in Tempe. The ASU women’s soccer team is playing UA on Thursday and is hoping to continue on to an NCAA tournament in the future. (Photo by Arianna Grainey)The Territorial Cup Series rivalry between ASU and UA continues to find ways to outdo itself.
The ASU soccer team has a chance to secure an NCAA tournament appearance with a win over its rival from Tucson in the regular season finale on Thursday.
Oh yeah, and Ali Doller’s back.
The junior forward from Tempe played her freshman year at ASU, transferred to Paradise Valley Community College and is now back in the Pac-12 at rival UA. She has scored seven goals on the season, second on the team.
More importantly for the Sun Devils, a win over UA most likely seals an NCAA tournament bid, while a loss or tie could end the season. At No. 44 in the latest RPI, the Sun Devils (9-7-2, 4-4-2 Pac-12) climbed a little higher than expected.
“No matter what, (playing against) UA is going to be a really intense game,” senior defender Kaitlyn Pavlovich said. “We didn’t want it to come down to that, but now we’re just going to have to take care of it as best we can.”
ASU coach Kevin Boyd believes the regular season finale against UA is a “win and you’re in” kind of game.
“I believe that we should be in on a win for a variety of reasons,” Boyd said. “We would be, at worst, 5th in the Pac and (at best) 4th. From that standpoint, I think that’s stating something in arguably the hardest conference in the country from top-to-bottom. In terms of total quality, probably the second conference. To be in the top half of that is really saying a lot.”
No matter what the teams' records are, the games between ASU and UA always come down to the wire.
All six games against UA under Boyd’s leadership have been decided by a 2-1 score. ASU has won four of those six games, with the two losses being the only time the program has lost to the Wildcats.
This also isn’t the same UA team that has finished last in the conference 10 times since 1995. Under first-year coach Tony Amato, the Wildcats (8-7-4, 3-6-1 Pac-12) have their most wins since 2009 and most conference wins since 2005.
“It’s no secret that we haven’t had very many seasons that are successful in terms of wins and losses," Amato said. "So this year, we really wanted to make sure we made some progress. We feel really good about the progress we’ve made, we know we got a long way to go, but it’s a credit to where our players have been this year in terms of putting in the effort, and having the right mentality and the right focus.”
Boyd commended Amato on the Wildcats' progress this season.
“I think he’s done a terrific job,” Boyd said. “I think he’s been really smart about how he utilize the players that he has in trying to maximize what they have available to them.”
Last weekend, ASU finally got its offense clicking again, scoring four goals in two games after scoring four goals in the previous eight.
Sophomore forward Cali Farquharson broke a long scoring drought Sunday, but senior forward Devin Marshall hasn’t scored since the conference opener.
Amato said both players will pose matchup problems for his defense.
“Devin is a hard-working, dangerous, physical player,” Amato said. “Cali is super skillful and can hit a ball with both feet, so we’re very aware of those two, and we know that if we’re going to get a result on Thursday, we have to be able to deal with that attacking threat.”
The Territorial Cup Series point will be decided on Thursday at 2 p.m., when ASU takes on UA in Tucson. The game will be televised by the Pac-12 Network.
Reach the reporter at justin.janssen@asu.edu or follow him on Twitter @jjanssen11
