UCLA
Oregon
Women's Soccer Downs Ducks, 1-0
September 26, 2015 | Women's Soccer
Los Angeles, Calif. - Two-time defending Pac-12 champion UCLA began its conference title defense with a 1-0 shutout victory over Oregon on Friday night. Forward MacKenzie Cerda scored for the Bruins early in the game, and goalkeeper Arielle Schechtman withstood a furious Oregon attack late in the game to preserve the shutout, finishing with a career-high 10 saves.
UCLA (5-4-0, 1-0-0 in the Pac-12) was playing without two of its top goal scorers in Taylor Smith, who was serving the last game in her two-game red card suspension, and Darian Jenkins, who was sitting out due to a shoulder injury suffered in the previous game. But Cerda put the Bruins on the board early with a goal at 8:47. Zoey Goralski started the play with a steal at midfield and then a perfect through ball to Cerda, who shot over onrushing goalkeeper Halla Hinriksdottir into an empty net. The goal was Cerda's first of the season.
The Bruins held on to the lead at halftime, thanks to four saves by Schechtman on five shots by the Ducks (3-6-0, 0-1-0). Her work was far from over, however, as she was peppered with eight shots in the second half, including two sequences late in the game in which she had to make two quick reaction saves. The first came in the 76th minute when Kristen Parr's header off a corner kick was batted away at the near post by Schechtman. The rebound went to Maryn Beutler, who fired a shot that Schechtman again batted away. Just a minute after that, Schechtman stopped Kira Wagoner's shot from inside the box. In the 81st minute, Schechtman stopped a free kick by Marissa Everett and the rebound shot by Wagoner.
“She was like Wonder Woman back there with those reaction saves,” said UCLA head coach Amanda Cromwell about Schechtman. “We miscleared more tonight than I recall we did in previous games. Good teams are going to punish you for misclearing, but thankfully we got saves on them.”
Notes: Defender Reema Bzeih and midfielder Claire Winter made their first career starts for UCLA and played career-high minute totals (76 for Bzeih, 80 for Winter) … MacKenzie Cerda became the eighth goal-scorer for UCLA this season … UCLA earned its eighth one-goal decision in nine games this season … The Bruins have won 11 consecutive Pac-12 Conference games and are unbeaten in their last 23 conference matchups.
