Men’s soccer wins title
In an amazing finish, the UCLA Men’s Soccer team defeated Stanford 1-0 in the NCAA national championship. Aaron Lopez scored the winning goal off of an indirect kick placed by Ryan Futagaki. The goal was scored in the 88th minute, which was simply shocking. Stanford expected the game to go into overtime and was totally disoriented in the last two minutes of the game. The Bruins were so exicted that they started celebrating with three seconds still left on the clock. The crowd was made up of mostly UCLA fans with some Stanford fans interspersed, so the crowd noise in the last minute of the game was intense.
What a storybook ending.
This is the first championship that UCLA during my time as a Bruin. The Women’s Soccer team came very close to winning this year as well as Men’s Water Polo. Go Bruins!!
ESPN’s praise of UCLA Men’s Soccer:
Bruins ‘One’ Again
Stanford will have to wait until next season to try and end its recent skid against UCLA. Aaron Lopez scored off a free kick from Ryan Futagaki with 1:02 left in regulation as the Bruins clinched their fourth NCAA Division I men’s soccer championship with a 1-0 victory Sunday in Dallas. The Cardinal lost twice to their Pac-10 rivals during the regular season — and both were nail-biting 1-0 decisions.
I must say, the Chronicle covered the story nicely in its feature. It is a very Stanford-biased paper, since most of its readers lean toward Berkeley or Stanford, but it definitely tipped its hat for the Bruins.
By the way, a thank you goes out to ESPN for the nice photos. I hope you guys don’t mind too much.
I surfed over to ESPN.com’s College Sports section and noticed that UCLA Men’s Soccer is the top story of the moment. Their blurb is in the full text of the article. ESPN also has a nice write-up of the game.