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Gauchos Win By Seven at USC

Box Score

Mar. 2, 2014

Los Angeles, CA - The Gauchos led 7-3 at the half and went on a 5 goal run to go up 12-3 about twelve minutes into the second half before downshifting and winning 15-8 on the road against the club at University of Southern California. It was a WWLL Central game and it was the second game in a tough road double. Friday night 11th ranked UCSB upset 6th ranked Cal Poly SLO on the Mustangs turf. This game at USC was with the 22nd ranked Trojans who were winners of five straight contests and 5-2 overall going into the game.

Almost everyone played in both halves for UCSB and the Gauchos worked 22 players into the game overall. As a result names that don't normally show up in the boxscore are there today. Sophomore Alena Riggs (Laguna Niguel, CA) scored 4 goals and had an assist. Sophomore Sydney Boral (Walnut Creek, CA) and freshman Melissa Hsu (Danville, CA) score a goal apiece. Playing in about 35 minutes senior Blair Evans (Salinas, CA) scored 6 times on a mix of dodges for unassisted goals, assisted goals and on a free position shot. Junior Lindsay Alex (Tustin, CA) had 4 assists coming off the bench. 

"We started a little slow I thought but by about the twenty minute mark we were up 6-2 and starting to perform," commented UCSB head coach Paul Ramsey after the game.

It was a fast start for UCSB in the second half. Riggs started her team on the 5-0 run with an unassisted goal for her first collegiate hat trick barely over a minute into the half. The attacker then followed up with her fourth goal of the game three minutes later. The Gauchos were up 9-3. About a minute later Evans scored unassisted and then on consecutive plays she was on the end of two nice feeds from Alex. UCSB was up 12-3 with 18 minutes remaining. Numerous substitutions at that point interupted the flow for UCSB more than what the Trojans did to stop it but it's a good lesson learned.

"Our reserves are quite talented but possibly not yet experienced enough to throw them all in like that,"said Ramsey.

"We can put any one or two of our reserves in and keep rolling but when we had 10 reserves in playing together for the first time USC started to take advantage."

The Trojans outscored the Gauchos mix of 10 reserves and 2 starters 5-3 over the final 15 minutes but everyone got to play and not just for a few minutes. Senior Megan Hughes (Tustin, CA) had 13 saves overall in goal. Hughes had, at one point, 12 saves against 17 shots for only 5 goals allowed before facing a bit of a barrage at the end of the game. She finished with 13 saves against 21 shots for a still impressive 61.9%.

UCSB improved to 5-3 overall and 2-0 in WWLL Central with the win while the Trojans dropped to 5-3, 0-1. The Gauchos next play when they host 7th ranked UCLA in another WWLL Central game in Santa Barbara at 12:00pm on Saturday. A UCSB win keeps the Gauchos in first place in WWLL Central and locks up an automatic qualifer spot in the WWLL Championship Tournament April 19th - 20th at UCSB.