The Ducks women’s soccer team travels to the desert this weekend for a pair of games against Arizona (0-9-2, 0-2-1 Pac-12) on Friday and Arizona State (5-6-0, 1-2-0 Pac-12) on Sunday.@@http://www.arizonawildcats.com/sports/w-soccer/sched/ariz-w-soccer-sched.html@@@@http://www.thesundevils.com/sports/w-soccer/sched/asu-w-soccer-sched.html@@
The Ducks will be looking to build on momentum gained from positive results this past weekend against UCLA and USC, when the Ducks held UCLA scoreless for 80 minutes and defeated USC to gain their first conference win of the season.
Those positive results in Los Angeles came from translating a good week of practices into good play in matches, according to associate head coach Lauren Hanson.
“Part of it is just practicing the way that we play,” Hanson said. “And last week before UCLA and USC we had really competitive practices every single day.”
Hansen said this week’s practices were equally competitive, and she hopes that intensity in practice will pay off on the pitch.
“They’ve been playing hard and we’re hoping to bring that same mentality into this weekend,” she said.
While the Ducks’ opponents this weekend pose a different set of challenges—a winless Arizona will be a much different opponent than a UCLA team ranked second in the nation—the team is preparing with the same level of intensity.
“We need to keep playing with confidence and not focus on our opponents and just focus on ourselves and just have fun,” senior Cody Miles said.
Hanson said that as the freshmen grow into their roles, the team has continued to get better. Throughout the Pac-12 season, over half of Oregon’s starting lineup have been freshmen and while the specific number changes on a game-by-game basis, it’s not likely to get smaller as the freshmen gain more experience.
“They’ve really stepped up the past two weeks, they’ve started to feel comfortable, I think, playing with the upperclassmen,” Hanson said. “They’ve picked up the tempo and played their game, which has raised the level of competition among our upperclassmen as well.”
While the lineup for this weekend’s games has not yet been set, Hanson said she expects the coaching staff will field a team with about as many freshmen starters as the Ducks played against UCLA and USC.
As the team gets more playing time together, they will only continue to improve. Junior Maddie Mercier said that the Ducks’ strong play against UCLA and USC was as much a result of being more in-tune with how to play to each others’ strengths, as it was any specific strategy changes.
“We’re a pretty young team,” Mercier said. “And we were all just figuring each other out early on and now we have a better grip of who we’re playing with and how we play.”
In Arizona, the Ducks face a winless squad that has scored just five goals this year — the Ducks’ leading scorer has four on her own — while allowing 26, including seven in one game to No. 1 Stanford.
Arizona State is lead by freshman Alexandra Doller, who has scored five of the Sun Devils’ 15 goals on the year, including two game-winners. Like the Ducks, the Sun Devils split their games last weekend, losing to Utah and beating Colorado.@@http://www.pac-12.org/portals/7/images/WSoccer/2011-Stats/HTML/ASU.HTM#team.ind@@
Hanson said the Ducks will attempt to dictate possession and tempo to have success in the desert as they look to improve on a 1-2 record in conference games.
“On the field, we need to compete first and foremost, so win the battle,” Hanson said. “From there we need to play our style of soccer, play good possession and then look to use our pace to get in behind.”