81alum Wrote: Stanford gets out to a quick 1-0 lead over #24 Washington State. WSU seems to be keeping the ball in front of the Stanford goal more than I would like to see--perhaps more than Santa Clara managed. And WSU has had a few shots, but not very accurate ones. Still, this does not look as lopsided as a Stanford fan would like to see.
The 1-0 lead holds up to the end of the first half. But WSU looks more dangerous than more highly ranked Santa Clara to my untrained eye. They have had more possession and more shots, to be sure, including one on a breakaway 1-on-goalkeeper opportunity that Campbell deflected and then covered up. Stanford does not look dominant.
The 1-0 lead holds up to the end of the game. WSU seemed to me to out-possess us, and out shot us 10-8, although we out shot them with shots on goal 4-2. Mia Bhuta had her first collegiate goal to give us the win.
I'm not sure why, but rather than creating long possessions with lots of short passes and triangles, in this game we attempted many long forward passes that wound up being 50/50 balls at best. It did not seem all that effective to me, and it allowed WSU a lot of opportunities. While many WSU shots were very inaccurate, there were a couple that could easily have been our undoing, but Campbell played them all correctly.
Santa Clara couldn’t hang with Stanford physically. WSU could so yes at least against us, your untrained eye is accurate. Fortunately WSU is a bit limited technically. But their physicality had us playing much more directly especially in the second half. The pressure overwhelmed the skill today. Overall though WSU had some shots, but very little that was dangerous. The team missed Pagador: I hope she isn’t too injured from the SC game. Some of the lineup choices I thought were strange today too. Grillione played a lot and wasn’t good for example.