Spoiler alert: The UC Irvine women’s soccer team is going big-game hunting again in the NCAA Tournament, and so it’s no surprise that, no, it did not end well for the higher seed.
College soccer has seen this movie before, so it shouldn’t be as much of a shock as it was in 2021, when the Anteaters eliminated No. 2 UCLA in the first round, 1-0. And it probably shouldn’t seem altogether unexpected after last year’s 2-0 encore upset against No. 4 USC in the opening round.
But this one, a 1-0 first-round victory over top-seeded UCLA on Friday? To pull off a third consecutive odds-defying feat? The sheer numerical audacity of it! Their rarefied lottery-winning, lightning-catching way of willing themselves past the most formidable of foes!?
Someone explain it to me.
How’d do you not only withstand a barrage of 22 Bruins shots, goalkeeper Glo Hinojosa making five saves to preserve the shutout, but play the final 15 minutes of an increasingly tense match down a player? How do you hang on that long before finally turning the table with a goal in the 87th minute?
How do you keep standing up to the behemoths, the best of the best, including finding a way this time to take down the No. 1 seed in the first round – historic because it’s only the second time it’s happened? Only USC did it before, in 2016, when the Trojans upset top-seed Santa Clara 1-0 on a game-winning goal in what is apparently a very crucial 87th minute.
How does it feel to score these sorts of marquee victories over and over … and over again, this latest one – which set up the Anteaters’ second-round match against No. 8 Gonzaga on Friday in Nebraska (1:30 p.m., ESPN+) – going down as just the second time in tournament history that a defending NCAA champion has been stopped in the first round, per College Soccer 360?
How are the Anteaters the only team that beats UCLA at home? UC Irvine handed the Bruins their first lost at at Wallis Annenberg Stadium on Friday since the last time UC Irvine showed up there and broke their hearts two years ago; a 23-game home unbeaten streak bookended by a pair of Alyssa Moore headers, on Nov. 12, 2021 and Nov. 10, 2023.
On behalf of coaches everywhere: How?
How the heck do these Anteaters – whose record is a modest 9-7-6 overall this season – keep doing this?
“It seems like we’ve figured out some kind of algorithm,” Coach Scott Juniper joked by phone this week.
He jests, but I’m not convinced there isn’t an actual method to this November madness.
Obviously, it starts with detailed tactical preparation. (UC Irvine was intentional about letting the Bruins dominate possession and take shots from long distances, looking to pounce on opportunities for a set piece or counterattack.)
But even the strategic architect – Juniper is an Englishman who wrote his master’s thesis on the group dynamics of elite soccer – knows well that you need a blend of tactical and emotional buy-in.
Because let’s be real, when it’s David vs. Goliath – or UC Irvine vs. UCLA – without guts, the gameplan matters naught.
“We were playing against a monster two years ago,” Juniper said of the Bruins, who rostered 15 players to the Anteaters’ nine who also participated in the teams’ previous showdown. “And now we were playing a monster with two more years or experience and a national championship.”
The Bruins (16-2-1) are supremely well-coached and loaded with top-end talent. They just won their second championship last season. They’ve made 27 NCAA Tournament appearances, seven as No. 1 seeds, and they’ve reached the round of Round of 16 nine times in the past 11 years – which is to say, every season they didn’t draw UC Irvine first.
The Anteaters’ players, meanwhile, might not have all played for the highest-profile club teams, or been recruited as hotly as most of the players representing one of the biggest brands in all of college sports.
Or, in some cases, they transferred from big-name schools, like Anteater midfielder Aislynn Crowder, who was on UCLA’s side on that fateful night in 2021.
AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH#NCAASoccer x @UCIwsoc pic.twitter.com/QZIfKiSQbf
— NCAA Soccer (@NCAASoccer) November 11, 2023
This time, though, she was on the winning side. What’s more, it was her powerful, precise free kick that found Moore for the game-winner. “Art,” Moore called the delivery. Said Juniper: “Aislynn ended up fitting into our culture really well.”
Yeah, she’s ’cause she’s clutch. And if your players’ programming is gutsy enough, stubborn enough and collaborative enough in the crunch, I wouldn’t bet against that algorithm.
“The biggest takeaway memory that I’ll have is the collective defending,” Moore said. “In the 15 minutes after Chloe (Ragon) was sent off with a second yellow card, the camaraderie I felt with my teammates was something I’d never felt before.”
Because beside its penchant for knocking off higher seeds, there’s nothing knockoff about the UC Irvine team that had to claw its way into the Big West tournament as the second-lowest seed, and then survive a penalty shootout and win three road games to even get back into the NCAA Tournament.
What there is: A ferocity that’s triggered, apparently, when the Anteaters are cornered.
“For some reason, we just find this next-level gear when it’s win or go home, it’s a simple refuse-to-lose mentality,” said Moore, a former Menifee Paloma Valley standout who says she’d counsel current Wildcats at her alma mater to give themselves over to the team in important moments.
“I’d say you have your best performances when you start focusing on team goals rather than individual goals.”
That doesn’t always happen during conference play, she admits, when the stakes aren’t so high. But it comes naturally – for Moore and her mates – when the season is on the line.
“We’re always looking for players who know how to compete,” Juniper said. “They can’t just be technically good in a clinical environment, they have to have that ability to bounce off the ground when they get knocked down, to be best when they’re a goal down. To know not necessarily how to win championships or win games, but it’s are you winning the moment you’re in?”
Spoiler alert: “And that,” the coach said, “is what we have on this team.”
THE DANCE CONTINUES !!! #STRONGwomen | #RipEm pic.twitter.com/aVrtAVsVl1
— UCI Women’s Soccer (@UCIwsoc) November 11, 2023