ucla

Question for all my Pilots' Women's Soccer brothers and sisters out there. I don't normally care about the other team's players, playing style, won/loss record, etc.. I am really only interested in MY team. However, since I am biding my time here, waiting for WWIII Friday night, I thought I'd ask a technical/personnel question or two about LewCLA; oops, I mean UCLA. (You old gassers out there probably will get that one. If you just have to know, send me a PM. I'm kinda lonely anyway. )

Oh, I almost forgot, my first question: I have heard the names Lang amd Cheney associated with great scoring. There are probably others deserving to mention, but let's start with those two. Do the Pilots put Emily on Cheney, (who I've heard is the MAC-Hermann favorite as well as only a soph.)? What about Lang. I know Emily was assigned to mark her in the 2005 Championship final, and flat out shut her down. ZERO shots. So then does Kelli take Lang or do they play a zone, or mixture of zone and one on one? Any other monsters I should know about? (Do I really want to know?)

How does UCLA's defense stop our "tremendous and dynamic offensive attack", to paraphrase Tennessee's coach Angela Kelly? I know Kelsey probably wishes she didn't attend UCLA her freshman year, having to sit behind an excellent GK, Val Henderson. (Although looking at their youth national team, I think Kelsey may have played more minutes there than Henderson.)

O.K. - I'm done. Thanks.

UCLA's other big-time players are Christina DiMartino and Danesha Adams. DiMartino is UCLA's version of Woznuk - a very crafty and skillful midfielder who likes to come up and attack. She is maybe UCLA's best player, despite Cheney's gaudy stats. Adams has speed and power... definitely a difficult matchup for anyone.

I'm not really sure if you'll see a lot of direct one-on-one marking per se. I'm sure that Emily and Kelli in the middle will share duties on Cheney and Lang, with Lopez and Tsao coming over to help out a ton. Winters will likely have to deal with DiMartino a lot, which is definitely a match-up to keep an eye on.

I really think the key to this game will be winning the ball in the midfield and trying like heck to play possession and keep it up in our offensive third. If UCLA has the run of the game and if their skill players up front have enough opportunities, it's going to be extremely diffictult to keep them off the scoreboard.

I thought our strategy against Tennesse in terms of utilizing our wing players to stretch the defense and help maintain possession worked really well. I know UCLA has more talent all around than the Vols, but again... keeping the ball away from the likes of DiMartino and Lang in the middle will be pretty crucial.

But hey... in the end, it's going to take some tremendous defense no matter what to win this game, and I definitely believe that the Pilot back line is up to the task!

This should really be a tremendous game--especially with all the talent on the field. I believe this is a match that UP wins, but I suspect it's going to take more than one goal. I don't think either team is going to be kept off the board.

here's a little piece on her rematch with the Bruins--
http://www.dailynews.com/sports/ci_7585462