Santa Clara adidas Classic

Sept. 30, 2001

Box Score

From Stanford head coach Any Nelson

"It was a good game for us in the sense that I felt SMU was just a good opponent for us at this point. They really challenged us physically. They threw a lot of balls in the air to us and we had to deal with those... I thought we did well with that. I thought we did what we wanted to do, as far as how we were trying to play. It was a good performance."

From San Diego State head coach Chuck Clegg

"After the game, I went up to Jerry (Smith) and said to him, 'Jerry, this is almost like soccer camp, I feel like I have to pay you for the lesson that you gave.' His team played brilliant. They gave us a clinic in the first half. They absolutely played as well as they could play. Everything we did wrong was a cause of the way their team played: they pressured us up high, forced us to give up the ball, and they went at us with speed. I think they were a bit unlucky not to score more goals. If it hadn't been for the brilliance of our goalkeeper, the score would have been higher. That was one of the best performances I've seen in the regular season by a college team. Santa Clara was really awesome. If they play like that consistently, they'll go far."

From Santa Clara head coach Jerry Smith

"Today's game was a very good first half by our team. We did a lot of things that we normally try to do. Apart from our finishing... with the amount of close-range shots we had in the first half, we could have scored another goal or two. Our finishing wasn't great today, but the rest of our game was pretty sharp. We had a number of injuries going into the game today, so we only had a couple of subs and, in combination with the heat today, it took its toll on the players. It certainly wasn't our most entertaining game of the year. It was one of those games we were grinding out a good solid performance, and I think we did that today. San Diego State is a good team. They played Stanford pretty evenly on Friday night and for us to come out and dominate them like we did today marks a good performance on our part."