The Utah soccer team is heading to the Pacific Northwest this weekend with an eye on winning its first Pac-12 match of the 2015 season. The Utes, who are coming off a 4-1 loss against Stanford last Friday, feel they are ready to fight hard in order to obtain the three points in both matchups.
The Utes begin their weekend road trip on Friday against Oregon State and end Sunday against Oregon. Both teams, who compete in the North Division of the Pac-12, are in the same boat as the Utes — they don’t possess the best records in the conference and are looking to get back to winning ways.
This is especially true of Oregon State, who lost its Pac-12 opener on Friday to USC, 2-1, and are in a four-game winless streak that started at the beginning of September. The Beavers see Friday’s matchup against the Utes as an opportunity to get out of their slump and to regain confidence for the rest of their grueling campaign.
Oregon is in even more trouble than its in-state rival. The Ducks, who also lost their Pac-12 opener to top-ranked UCLA 2-1 in Los Angeles, have only won three games so far this season and are trying to climb out of the hole they’ve dug themselves. Desperate to obtain points, the Ducks will come out the gate hard against the Utes on their home turf.
Utah is confident it can get the job done this weekend, but just because both of these Oregon teams haven’t been as impressive as other teams in the conference this season doesn’t mean the Utes should let their guard down and play easy. Both teams will do whatever it takes to get a win and will use all their strength and technical ability in the process.
Since the team had Sunday off, Utah head coach Rich Manning made sure his players worked extra hard this week at training to be prepared and to play tough.
“We’ve been working really hard and will continue to chop at it ’till the tree falls over,” said Manning.
With a lot of the results going against Utah so far this season, the Utes are almost at the point where they have to win in order to have any chance of survival, and this weekend can be a huge difference-maker — for better or worse.
But Utah is showing signs of life and can take a lot of positives from the past couple of games, including the loss to Stanford, where the Utes played very well in the first half. The Utes led 1-0 before halftime but fell apart in the second when the Cardinal dominated the Utes by scoring four unanswered goals.
Utah senior Katie Rogers also agreed the Utes played well and had great communication in the first half, only to see it slip away after the break.
“Our communication was great in the first half and then we didn’t keep that up in the second half,” Rogers said. “We got a little flustered, I think, and didn’t keep our intensity up.”
If Utah can maintain the momentum they had in the first half against Stanford for the full 90 minutes, the Utes should get wins out of both games before they return to Salt Lake City for Homecoming Week.
Kickoff at Oregon State on Friday is at 5 p.m. MDT, and Sunday’s match against Oregon is at 2 p.m. MDT. Both games can be seen on Pac-12 Networks.
@chad_marquez