The Women of Troy battled under the lights of the Coliseum to conclude their 2014 regular season against crosstown rival UCLA, but ultimately fell 2-0. The stakes were high as they faced the No. 1 ranked Bruins in front of an exhilarating Senior Night crowd of 10,128 people. The Trojans broke their own regular-season attendance record from back in 2010 when they faced UCLA in the Coliseum.
"I've got a really good team," said the new head coach Keidane McAlpine. "I'm very excited about the way we played against this team. We can fine tune some things. We got caught up in the moment at times. It was a great crowd, great atmosphere and we will probably never play in front of something like this again."
The Trojans hung tight with the defending NCAA champions until the 79th minute when UCLA senior Kylie McCarthy found the back of the goal off of a rebounded save from senior goalie Caroline Stanley. Stanley played the best game of the season according to McAlpine as the USC defense fought off 22 shots before allowing two goals in the final 11 minutes.
"I thought this by far was Caroline's best game. I thought our commitment to blocking shots and defending and getting our bodies stuck in especially our back five was absolutely fantastic," said the head coach. "However, we could have been better in the front half defending. We allowed some seams that they exploited very well."
On the offensive side, the Trojans really struggled to get anything going with only three recorded shots for the entire match compared to UCLA's 24. McAlpine credited this to the young team's impatience but as he said sometimes in soccer you only need one goal to win. If one of those three shots had gone in, it could have been a much different outcome.
The Women of Troy will now have to wait until Monday to see if they made it to the NCAA tournament which will be announced at 1:30 p.m. PST at ncaa.org.
Here are John McGillen's photos from the Trojans' record-setting regular season finale:
