Both Cal Women's & Men's Soccer upset Stanford at The Farm to close regular season
Cal Women's Soccer will find out their NCAA postseason fate on November 11th; Cal Men's Soccer needs to win the ACC tournament, starting today (Nov 6)
One constant in a season of change being in a brand new conference for Cal Soccer is ending the regular season with a match against rival and still conference-mate Stanford.
Last Thursday and Friday, Cal Soccer went down to The Farm to take on ranked Stanford teams. In a span of 24 hours, the women’s and then the men’s California Golden Bears combined to twice make Stanford into a Bear Territory in dramatic fashions!
Cal Women’s Soccer (12-5-2, 5-4-1 in ACC, RPI 46)
Making the initial penalty kick save does not always mean the scoring danger has passed. Cal Women’s Soccer experienced the other side of this pain in their home loss to then-No.1 North Carolina a month ago. Back on October 10th just when it looked like the hard-fought match would end in a draw, an 88th-minute penalty kick was awarded to the Tar Heels. Although Cal goalkeeper Teagan Wy made the initial save, cruel luck had it that the ball rebounded to the Tar Heel penalty taker for a second-chance goal. Cal ended that game with a disheartening 1-0 loss.
Last Thursday night from The Farm, Courtney Boone might have just saved Cal’s season with an 89th-minute putback of the rebound on a Karli Lema penalty kick attempt that was initially saved. Boone raced to the rebound before everyone else and scored the winner in a much-needed Cal 3-2 win at No.8 Stanford to close the regular season.
Golden Bears had an early 2-0 lead on a pair of amazing goals only to concede two quick goals (first via a PK) around the 70+ minutes of the match. Be sure to check out the highlights below.
Freshman defender Campbell Carroll scored on an acrobatic goal from 30 yards out in the 33rd minute for her second collegiate goal. Senior forward Alexis Wright tallied her 4th goal in the 63rd minute from a nice buildup from Julia Leontini (a graduate transfer from Stanford) and Velize King.
After Stanford equalized the match, both sides took chances to score the game-winner. With about 20 seconds left, senior Karlie Lema found junior Alex Klos inside the box who was fouled by a Stanford defender to grant Cal a late penalty. This set up senior defender Courtney Boone’s heroic moment.
The big win meant that Cal finished 7th in the extremely tough ACC conference. However, because ACC did not change the format of their women’s soccer tournament of only six participants, Cal can only wait for next week’s NCAA tournament announcement. With this tough road win, Cal does improve their RPI by about a dozen spots to a much safer 40’s.
This week, Cal star senior forward Karli Lema was named the ACC Offense Player of the Year for her historic season.
Lema scored 16 goals (3rd nationally, 1st in the ACC) to go with 6 assists for 38 points (2nd nationally, 1st in the ACC). She also had 4 game winners.
https://x.com/CalWSoc/status/1854215212368585114
While Lema’s scoring rate has slowed down a bit in ACC play, she was still the clear focal point of the Cal offense. She was named First Team All-ACC in a stacked conference that is easily the best in the country.
By RPI, ACC has No.1 Duke, No.3 North Carolina, No.6 Florida State, No.7 Wake Forest, No.9 Stanford, No.11 Notre Dame, and No.12 Virginia. Cal is in the next tier with No.35 Virginia Tech and No.38 Pittsburgh. However, Cal’s 7th-place ACC finish meant that the Golden Bears finished above Stanford (via the head-to-head tiebreaker) and Virginia.
Of course, Cal also came super close to upsetting both North Carolina and Duke. The Duke loss was turned by an ankle injury to goalkeeper Teagan Wy on a play that resulted in a Blue Devil yellow card. With Wy sidelined, Duke came back to win that 2-1 match. Wy also missed the next week’s road losses at Notre Dame and Louisville.
With Wy back, Cal closed the regular season with two victories over SMU and Stanford. Wy also earned the Second Team All-ACC honor for her great season. She had a season-high nine saves against North Carolina and held Duke scoreless for 56 minutes.
Should the Cal Bears make the NCAA field of 64, they will be an extremely dangerous squad with the offense and a game-changing goalkeeper to beat anyone. Having stars like Lema and Wy should only help their cause, but we will not for sure until soon past 1 PM PT on November 11th.
Cal Men’s Soccer (6-7-2, 2-4-2 in ACC, RPI 59)
The new ACC schedule does mean that instead of a home-and-home, the Big Classico between Cal and Stanford was reduced to just one match.
Adding to a season that already included a 1-0 win at then-No.1 Pitt, Cal Men’s Soccer got a 1-0 win at No.22 Stanford last Friday. Kevin Carmichael scored the game-winner in the 81st minute and Marco Brougher delivered the clean sheet.
Cal nearly went ahead in the 67th minute but the shot hit the crossbar and bounced out. Carmichael, already drafted in the MLS Super Draft in the second round last year by Nashville SC along with fellow teammate Wyatt Meyer in the first round, played the hero with a long shot just inside the box.
Because the ACC Men’s Soccer tournament involved all the teams, Cal will have a shot to win their way into the NCAA field. Leonard Griffin’s men will need to beat North Carolina in Chapel Hill today at 3 PM PT and then get three more wins.
Cal lost a close 2-1 match at UNC on September 28th, but these 1-0 road wins showed that anything is possible. North Carolina is 5th in the RPI and there is some outside chance of Cal moving up enough with just 2-3 wins in the ACC tournament to qualify for the NCAA tournament field of 48 (26 at-large bids).
What a gritty performance by the Bears on Wednesday, as they stunned NC in Chapel Hill. On to the quarterfinals, at second seeded Duke.
Great info on some of the "olympic" sports. However, there was nothing on Track and Field, the original Olympic sport.