SANTA CLARA, Calif. – Coming off a double overtime win, Santa Clara women's soccer returns home after four weeks on the road for a West Coast Conference matchup. The Broncos host Pacific on Sun., Oct. 19 at 11 a.m. in the front end of a men's and women's soccer doubleheader. Last week Santa Clara topped San Francisco on the road in double overtime 1-0 to move to 9-5-0 overall and 2-1-0 in conference action.
"From a coaching perspective, there's a lot of value in growing from stressful opportunities, and our game against USF was certainly a stressful opportunity for us," said Santa Clara head coach Jerry Smith. "What we talked about in the overtime was win, lose or draw, let's make sure that we give maximum focus, maximum effort and our best effort at coaching one another. In addition to being an overtime game, it was near record heat playing on a turf field. I think the team showed a lot of grittiness in the win. In addition to grinding out a good win, the quality of the goal was fantastic. It was a really nice passing sequence with a perfectly played final pass and then great finish. All in all it was a great road victory for the team."
Santa Clara has outscored opponents 19-15 on the season and holds a 158-140 advantage in shots. The Broncos have a 76-70 edge in shots on goal as well.
Sofia Huerta leads the team with 10 goals and 22 points while adding two assists. Brittany Ambrose is second on the team with five goals and 10 points. Ambrose and Huerta have each scored four game-winners. Kat McAuliffe leads the Broncos with four assists and has found the back of the net twice for eight points. Mariana Galvan and Anjel Brown have scored one goal apiece while Galvan also has an assist. Katie Speidel has added two assists and six other Broncos each have one assist. Andi Tostanoski has allowed 15 goals for a 1.06 GAA and has made 53 saves for a .779 save percentage. She has picked six shutouts this season.
"I'm happy with a high amount of shots on goal we had in our last game," said Smith. "We have four goals right now on our team. Our goals are: coach one another better, put more pressure on the ball without over-committing, and then to throttle back our composure after winning the ball so we're a composed attacking team, and fourthly, to get more shots on goal. All four of those are important goals for us. We have to give credit to the USF goalkeeper. She was outstanding and made a number of terrific saves. If you're going to score goals in our sport, you're going to have to get a high percentage on goal. In our Pepperdine game, we didn't feel like enough of our shots were on goal and in our LMU game, not enough of our shots were on goal. So it's nice to see that paying off for us."
Santa Clara is 8-0-0 all-time vs. Pacific with the first meeting coming in 1981. Last year the Broncos went to Stockton and came away with a 2-0 win.
Pacific is 2-11-1 on the season and 0-4 in the WCC. The Tigers have a 0-5-1 record on the road this year. Last week they dropped two games at home, 3-1 to LMU and 5-0 to Pepperdine.
The Tigers have been outscored on the season 35-6 and outshot 190-114. Opponents hold an 85-50 advantage in shots on goal over Pacific.
"Pacific is a very similar team to the one that we just played," said Smith. "They're a hard working team. They are built on defensive pressure and trying to out-work their opponents. Those are often times harder teams to game plan for. There's not one special goal scorer, one playmaker, or one player that you can key on. This is a whole team of hardworking players and often times that's a more difficult game to play. It will be nice playing a home game. We have played five away games and I am very pleased that we are 4-1 in our last five away games. Even in our one loss at Pepperdine, our performance was very good. It will be nice to play at home, but it will be a very similar type of opponent to the one we just played, in which case that means it's going to be another kind of grinder game for us. "
Taylor Ayers leads the Tigers with two goals and five points while tying for the team lead with one assist. Alex Hussar and Matti Long are second on the team with three points as each have one goal and one assist. Malaya Cabrera and Lilly Higashino have each scored once while Sandra Padilla and Hannah Terry have one assist apiece. Jacqueline Kane and Melissa ma have split time in goal for Pacific this season. Kane has allowed 15 goals for a 1.87 GAA and has made 21 saves for a .583 save percentage. Ma has allowed 20 goals for a 3.12 GAA and has made 26 saves for a .565 save percentage. Each keeper has one shutout.
