No. 1 Stanford Women’s Soccer set to face No. 5 BYU after win over No. 8 Alabama
On Friday, No. 1 seeded Stanford women’s soccer defeated No. 8 Alabama in the 2nd round of the NCAA tournament by a final score of 7-3. Elise Evans and Jasmine Aikey each scored two goals to lead the way for the Cardinal while Gianna Paul scored two goals for the Crimson Tide. Caroline Birkel was the winning goalkeeper for the Cardinal with three goals allowed and one save while Coralie Lallier was the losing goalkeeper for the Crimson Tide with seven goals allowed and 15 saves.
BOX SCORE: Alabama at Stanford-Friday, November 21st
“Fantastic night, exciting for the fans,” Stanford head coach Paul Ratcliffe said after the match. “So many goals scored. Team got better and better as the game and ended really strong.”
Despite the high scoring action, Stanford never trailed in this match. Jasmine Aikey scored for Stanford at 3:18 off an assist from Mia Bhuta to give the Cardinal a 1-0 lead. At 11:06, Gianna Paul scored her first goal of the match to tie it up 1-1 as Kiley Kukan and Larkin Thomason got the assist.
Shortly thereafter at 17:41, Andrea Kitahata scored for the Cardinal to make it 2-1, finding the top left of the goal off her left foot as Eleanor Klinger and Jasmine Aikey each got the assist. Alabama would not quit as Madeline Padelski scored at 33:41 to tie it up 2-2 off an assist from Kukan.
After getting their 9th and 10th corner kicks of the match, Elise Evans scored for the Cardinal by finding the top right of the goal at 40:32 off an assist from Charlotte Kohler. That made it a 3-2 lead, which would remain the score at halftime.
In the second half, Stanford quickly went up 4-2 at 47:48 as Evans found her second goal of the night off an assist from Kohler and Shae Harvey. It looked like maybe the Cardinal would finally pull away for good.
“Yeah, I mean, we needed goals in this game,” Evans said of her ability to score. “It was pretty tight in the beginning, so I was just trying to do whatever I could for the team. And for me, being up there is always super fun and I always, if I’m gonna be up there, I want to take as many chances as I can and just getting off the rebounds or any resurfaces I want to be there when I can and make sure I can hopefully get in the back of the net and help my team.”
However, the Crimson Tide had one more goal left in them at 53:33 as Paul once again scored, finding the top left of the goal off her right foot. It was now 4-3, once again only a one goal lead for the Cardinal.
For the next little while, it remained 4-3 as it looked like the match could go down to the wire. That would eventually change at 73:27 as Aikey found the top left of the goal off her left foot thanks to an assist from Kitahata and Kohler. Up 5-3, the Cardinal finally had more breathing room.
“Yeah, it’s something the team spoke about at halftime,” Ratcliffe said of gaining separation. “We wanted to create a separation. The game was a little bit too close because they had some really talented players up front that could score, as you saw. And so that was the key and then we kept scoring, which was cool. We put in some players off the bench that I thought added a lot of value and we were able to continue scoring.”
In the final three minutes, the Cardinal would score two more goals. At 87:01, Y-Lan Nguyen found the top right of the goal off her right foot off an assist from Brooke Holden to make it 6-3.
“Yeah, and like a cracking goal,” Ratcliffe said of Nguyen’s goal. “I mean, Y-Lan’s been amazing for us all season and that shot, I mean, it knuckled. It was an impressive strike.”
At 89:48, Allie Montoya found the top right of the goal off her right foot off an assist from Noe Johnson and Jaden Thomas. 7-3 was the final score as the Cardinal won a rather high scoring match in which they outshot Alabama 40-5 with a 22-0 advantage in corner kicks.
“I think keeping possession and then getting the ball wide and going one v one on the width and getting in crosses,” Ratcliffe said of their offensive success. “And then defensively, they were doing a good job and we were getting corner kicks from [inaudible]. And then we were really potent on our set plays. I thought the corner kicks were incredible tonight.”
“Yeah, I mean, the end result, I think having seven goals is great,” Evans said. “Obviously, especially as a defender, we don’t want to concede that many and we, you know, need to make sure we clean up a lot of stuff. So there’s a lot of stuff we can learn from. But overall, coming back, and it was a tight game, and we were able to find that separation and a lot of people getting some great goals is awesome and putting that many goals on in a tournament game is huge, but we definitely need to clean up defensively and there’s a lot of stuff we can from there as we continue on until Monday.”
With the win, the Cardinal advance to the Sweet Sixteen of the NCAA tournament, where they will face No. 5 BYU. That match will be played on The Farm at Cagan on Monday, November 24th at 1:00 PM PT on ESPN+.
“Yeah, BYU is always a strong program,” Ratcliffe said of the Cougars. “Jennifer Rockwood has been there for many years, done an incredible job. So they’re always well-organized always have a talented team. So it’s gonna be another really difficult match for us.”
“Yeah, I think we’re excited about it,” Evans added. “We played them twice in the tournament and so they’re always a good team to play. They always have some older players on their team. And so with experience, so I’m excite for our group to get another chance at them. We saw them in the final four and so I’m sure they’ll be fired up to play us, but we’re also even more fired up to get them and play them on our home turf.”
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