It was a tough trip to the Bay Area this weekend for the Sun Devils. On Thursday night in Palo Alto, ASU fell without scoring to No. 1 Stanford (17-1, 10-0) and lost 2-1 to No. 32 Cal (13-3-3, 5-2-3) on Sunday afternoon.
The match against Stanford was a microcosm of ASU’s season-long inability to find any consistent offense. In the match, ASU put up a meager one shot in 90 minutes of action.
Following the loss to Stanford, ASU headed north to Berkeley to face Cal in the Sun Devils' final out of state road match of the season.
All year, ASU has been plagued by slow starts, but finally flipped the script on its opponents on Sunday, scoring within the first minute of action. Senior midfielder Christina Edwards scored her first goal of the season off junior forward Olive Jones' free kick.
Unfortunately for ASU, that early goal was their only goal. They surrendered goals in both the 42nd and 76th minutes to give the Bears a narrow 2-1 victory.
In its second match of the weekend, the Sun Devils were a little more offensively active, getting four total shots on goal.
ASU has not won a match since its road victory on Sept. 15 in Baton Rouge against LSU. Whether it’s been the increase in opponent quality or just an overall lack of roster talent, the Sun Devils have been outplayed throughout the majority of their Pac-12 matches.
The Sun Devils are down to their last chance to finish with a Pac-12 victory next weekend, wrapping up their season in Tucson against in state rivals the UA Wildcats (10-6-1, 4-5-1) on Nov. 8 at 7 p.m. MST.
Clarification: This article was updated on Nov. 4, 2019, at 1:30 a.m. to fix a typo in the headline.
Reach the reporter at ltochter@asu.edu and follow @Leo_Toch on Twitter.
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