Oct. 30, 2009
PALO ALTO, Calif. – The Arizona State women’s soccer team came up short in its bid to upset top-ranked Stanford on Friday as the Cardinal came away with a 3-1 win before 1,156 fans at Cagan Stadium.
While the Cardinal (18-0, 7-0 Pac-10) took more than three times as many shots as the Sun Devils (33-10) and had a 10-0 advantage in corner kicks, ASU still found a way to be in the game after redshirt freshman forward Courtney Tinnin chipped in a ball from 30 yards out that went over the reach of Stanford goalkeeper Kira Maker to cut Stanford’s lead to 2-1 with just under four minutes left. However any hopes the Sun Devils (7-6-3, 0-5-1 Pac-10) had of forcing the game into overtime were thwarted a short time later when Stanford junior midfielder Morgan Redman headed the ball into the far post to once again give the Cardinal a two-goal advantage, 3-1.
“It was a hard-fought game,” ASU head coach Kevin Boyd said following the contest. “[Stanford] is No. 1 and undefeated for a reason. We are not quite there yet as a program, but we played them hard and made it difficult for them.
“I was happy with our performance because we looked more like who we are: A tough, blue-collar team that makes it difficult on other teams and is dangerous when we get the ball and go forward and we did all of that. We made it interesting when we got it to a 2-1 score, but unfortunately they responded on us and scored a little later. Our focus now is on Sunday’s game [at California].”
The Cardinal came out and took a 1-0 lead three minutes into the game when freshman midfielder Mariah Nogueira played a ball from the right and scored on a header. The score would remain the same until the 49th minute when Stanford freshman forward Courtney Verloo took a pass in front of the ASU goal and scored to put the Cardinal up 2-0.
Junior Jill Shoquist led the Sun Devils with three shots while Tinnin and junior Alexandra Elston both had two apiece. Freshman goalkeeper Alyssa Gillmore made 12 saves, several of which were the result of spectacular individual effort on her part.
The Sun Devils close out their weekend trip to the Bay Area on Sunday at 1 p.m. when they face California.