Gauchos Break Buffalos to Improve to 8-0Box Score
Feb. 18, 2008
 Santa Barbara, CA - Sophomore Michelle Davis (San Diego, CA) put the punctuation mark on a great weekend for UCSB when she scored on a solo effort with a minute remaining against 5th ranked University of Colorado, Boulder. The reserve midfielder's goal was the 10th of the game for the Gauchos in a 10-6 win over the Buffalos. Third ranked UCSB played, perhaps, the toughest schedule at their home tournament and romped unscathed through everything thrown at them.
Undefeated Colorado was fresh off a come from behind 10-9 upset of top ranked Cal Poly SLO earlier in the day. They'd done it by erasing a 5-0 deficit to get the win. UCSB took an early 2-0 lead when Katie Moran (San Rafael, CA) assisted senior Kristyn Gherardi (San Mateo, CA) 2:20 into the game. Junior Megan Puckett (Poway, CA) followed up with a slice and dice dodge from the left corner two minutes later.
Colorado had a solid game plan going into their contest with the Gauchos. They were careful with the ball and didn't put it in too many risky situations on offense. Most often they took it behind in transition and settled, not even looking for slow break options. During possessions that often ate up two and three minutes at a time they attacked equally from behind and from the top. A sweep play from the top pulled UCSB defenders out of slide position on Colorado's first scoring play.
A hard lefty bounce shot beat freshman goal keeper Diane Clow (Poway, CA) to get Colorado on the board. It was six minutes later that Colorado mounted their next serious attempt and it was another sweep play from the top that was good for a goal, making the score 2-2. UCSB won the draw and after being fouled Moran passed up an opportunity to shoot on a free position at the 8 meter. Instead she fed the ball across the face of the goal to sophomore Maggie Aker (Oakland, CA) to help her put UCSB up 3-2. Colorado again held the ball on their next possession before eventually getting a feed in to a cutter for a goal. UCSB continued their late heroics at the end of first halves when senior Emily Ruby (Davis, CA) dodged down the alley and fed back opposite post to Moran with 11 seconds to go before halftime.
Even though it was a low scoring game for the UCSB offense, at least by their standards, seven different Gauchos were involved in scoring the team's ten goals. UCSB head coach Paul Ramsey is quick to point out that there are even more touches than that involved in what the UCSB offense is doing.
"If we had the ability to chart our ball movement I'd like to think it would be a sequence of dodges and diagonal lines on every possession," he said. "You wouldn't even be able to interpret the final sketch because there would be too much on the paper."
Ruby's assist to Moran was the start of a 3 goal run. Gherardi took the opening draw of the second half the entire way by weaving through three Colorado defenders and netting her second goal of the game. Starting with Ruby setting up Moran at the end of the first half through the end of the game UCSB outscored Colorado 7-3 to steadily distance themselves from the Buffalos. Clow started stuffing the outside bouncers on her way to 10 saves. Her save percentage was 62.5% overall but she was 71.4% after the first two Colorado goals and that frustrated the Colorado attack.
"I understand what Colorado was trying to do by slowing the ball down," said Ramsey after the game. "However, it's early in the season for a team to be disciplined enough to pull it off."
"Later in the year it might work for someone but later in the year we're also going to be even tighter on defense and I expect our offense will be generating 30 to 40 shots per game."
The Shootout was a success for the Gauchos. UCSB played 2nd ranked Colorado State on Friday night and upset them 12-10 in overtime. Saturday the Gauchos beat 4th ranked Brigham Young 10-4 and 9th ranked Michigan 13-8. Sunday morning unranked Texas A&M fell 11-2 setting up a battle of the unbeatens between the Gauchos and the Buffalos in the afternoon. Colorado was 5-0 until they met UCSB. Other teams in the Shootout might argue they had a tougher schedule but that would only be because they had to play UCSB.
"I pitted us against those teams when I put our schedule together to challenge us to the utmost," said Ramsey. "We passed and we are playing some nice lacrosse."
UCSB improved to 8-0 while Colorado dropped to 5-1. The Gauchos are looking forward to the release of the next US Lacrosse WDIA Coaches Poll on Wednesday.
|
