Even with my limited soccer knowledge, I too noticed at the end of the game how easily we were able to control the ball with long kicks downfield toward the corner. One thing that helped this work was that the kicks were diagonal, not straight down the field, giving Smith and Haley time to run onto them.
UCLA uses a lot of give-and-goes to advance the ball by dribbling, they are fast and skilled and it works much of the time. We used to do more of that, but not as much now--maybe because we only have a few players fast enough?
I agree that the officiating looked increasingly one-sided as the game went on. Several times our kicks went awry because we had been shoved from behind or the side by a UCLA player (this happened to Haley multiple times); those should not be turnovers. There was also one offside call by the side ref in front of the Stanford bench (important because Haley had run onto a long goal kick, or free kick, I don't remember which, well ahead of any defender and would have had a decent chance to score), and our players who were looking along the same line as the side ref were just looking at each other open-mouthed in shock (to their credit, I guess, they didn't say anything to the ref).
Probably not as evident from the broadcast, but that was the best soccer atmosphere I've ever been in at the Q. A small but organized group of students has been coming to games and cheering and pounding a drum. For UCLA they brought reinforcements and clapped and yelled cheers throughout, and they had the full crowd join them a lot.
UCLA uses a lot of give-and-goes to advance the ball by dribbling, they are fast and skilled and it works much of the time. We used to do more of that, but not as much now--maybe because we only have a few players fast enough?
I agree that the officiating looked increasingly one-sided as the game went on. Several times our kicks went awry because we had been shoved from behind or the side by a UCLA player (this happened to Haley multiple times); those should not be turnovers. There was also one offside call by the side ref in front of the Stanford bench (important because Haley had run onto a long goal kick, or free kick, I don't remember which, well ahead of any defender and would have had a decent chance to score), and our players who were looking along the same line as the side ref were just looking at each other open-mouthed in shock (to their credit, I guess, they didn't say anything to the ref).
Probably not as evident from the broadcast, but that was the best soccer atmosphere I've ever been in at the Q. A small but organized group of students has been coming to games and cheering and pounding a drum. For UCLA they brought reinforcements and clapped and yelled cheers throughout, and they had the full crowd join them a lot.