SAN LUIS OBISPO, Calif. - Sixth-seeded reigning champion UC Irvine and fourth-seeded Long Beach State produced single goals to down higher seeds on Thursday night at Mustang Memorial Field and reach the final of the 2022 Big West Women’s Soccer Championship.
UC Irvine needed the 20-minute overtime period for its second straight tournament game and Alyssa Moore finally notched the decisive goal just 2:22 away from a penalty-kick tiebreaker with No. 2 seed UC Davis. Summer Laskey pushed Long Beach State past Cal Poly, the top-seeded regular-season champion that is hosting the semifinals and final.
UC Irvine and Long Beach State will meet in the championship game this Sunday, Nov. 6, with kickoff slated for 1 p.m. at Mustang Memorial Field Presented by Dignity Health in San Luis Obispo. The match will air live on ESPN+, with the victor earning The Big West’s automatic bid into the 64-team NCAA Division I Women’s Soccer Championship. Tammy Blackburn and Gracie Cutler will be on the call.
UCI is in search of its third Big West tourney title and second in succession, while the Beach are after a fifth trophy and first since 2018.
| No. 6 seed UC Irvine 1, No. 2 seed UC Davis 0 (OT) |
Box score | UCI presser | UCD presser
No. 6 seed UC Irvine was the first team to punch their ticket into the 2022 Big West Women’s Soccer Championship, after a 110-minute duel with No. 2 seed UC Davis went the way of the defending champion Anteaters at Mustang Memorial Field Thursday night.
The game was scoreless through regulation with both sides matching up nearly identically in the box score with each team seeing chances to get on the board, but needing extra time to decide who would advance to Sunday’s championship.
UC Irvine broke through with 142 ticks remaining in the second overtime yet again on a set piece. Amber Huff sent the ball in on the corner kick and Alyssa Moore slotted it in past a diving Caeley Goldstein. The game-winner for Moore was the fourth of the season for the redshirt sophomore forward from Menifee, Calif. For Huff, the assist was a team-leading seventh of the year, as Huff has helped on the last six scores of the season for UC Irvine. All three of the postseason goals scored for the No. 6 seed have come off a set piece started by Moore.
Huff closed the contest with a team-leading three shots, one on goal, with UC Davis’ Leslie Fregoso firing off a game-high four shots. UC Irvine keeper Glo Hinojosa recorded the victory with four saves, and Goldstein also compiled four saves with one goal against.
Next, the Anteaters will again play role of underdog, taking on Long Beach State in another round of the Black and Blue rivalry.
| No. 4 seed Long Beach State 1, No. 1 seed Cal Poly 0 |
Box score |
LBSU presser |
CP presser
A lone goal by Summer Laskey lifted fourth-seeded Long Beach State to a 1-0 upset over top-seeded regular-season champion and host Cal Poly in the second semifinal of the 2022 Big West Women’s Soccer Championship on Thursday night at Mustang Memorial Field.
With the victory, Long Beach State improves to 8-6-6 overall. Cal Poly concludes the 2022 season with a mark of 9-6-4. The Mustangs had won two straight and gone an unbeaten 5-0-2 over their last seven with a solitary goal surrendered.
Long Beach State moves on to the Big West championship game for the first time since lifting the trophy for the fourth instance in 2018. The Beach was atop the table by as many as three points late in the year before finishing the regular season with a tie and back-to-back losses to fall to fourth.
The only score of the contest came at 61:17 as a result of some great work down the right side by Big West Offensive Player of the Year Lena Silano. The fifth-year senior forward received the ball on that flank, turned the defender on her back, dribbled toward the end line and chipped a beautiful cross into the middle. It dipped just over the leap of a Cal Poly defender, where Laskey headed it from five yards straight on. Cal Poly’s Mackenzie Samuel, The Big West Goalkeeper of the Year, got her left hand to it for the save, but the sophomore Beach substitute was first to the rebound and poked the ball into the bottom left corner for a sixth goal of the season and first collegiate game-winning tally.
Zora Standifer came up with four saves to notch a third individual clean sheet in net for Long Beach State. The only one of the first half came in the 32nd minute as the sophomore went full extension to tip Brennan Cole’s far-post header from six yards off a left-sided cross over the crossbar and out for a corner kick. Samuel had five stops for the hosts.
Cal Poly had a 14-11 edge in shots. The Mustangs held Silano, the league’s leading goal-scorer with 16 who produced a brace in Sunday’s 2-1 overtime win over UC Santa Barbara in the first round, to zero attempts for the first time this season. Big West Freshman of the Year Cherrie Cox led all players with five shots for LBSU, while Big West Midfielder of the Year Camille Lafaix wound up with four to pace the Mustangs.
The regular-season meeting between the rivals had ended in a 1-1 draw, also in San Luis Obispo, on Oct. 20.