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#16 Soccer Chops Down Reigning Champs

Apr 4, 2021

TEMPE, Ariz -- The No. 16 Arizona State soccer team (8-2-2) came ready to play as they blanked the reigning national champions, Stanford Cardinal (5-4-1) with a 2-0 shutout win at Sun Devil Stadium on Sunday afternoon for the first Sun Devil win over Stanford since 2013. 

Freshman midfielder Jazmine Wilkinson scored her second goal in the second consecutive game to put the Sun Devils on the board just four minutes after kick-off. Junior midfielder Eva Van Deursen sealed the deal for the Sun Devils as she took a shot from midfield which passed over the reach of the Cardinal goalkeeper to secure the 2-0 win. 
 

In her tenth start this season, Giulia Cascapera earned the shutout stopping 12 shots from the Cardinal offense.

The Sun Devils contended with the 97 degree heat on Sunday afternoon in the first home win against Stanford since 2003. It's also the first time in program history that the team beat both Stanford and UCLA in the same season.   
 

"They are national champions for a reason, but I felt that our team was really special today," said head coach Graham Winkworth. 

HOW IT HAPPENED

  • Sophomore goalkeeper Giulia Cascapera kept the Cardinals off the board through the full 90 minutes of play for her fifth shutout this season  
  • ASU put the pressure on right away and Jazmine Wilkinson capitalized on an opportunity to put the Sun Devils ahead just four minutes into the first half. Wilkinson has now scored in two consecutive games after earning her first career goal against the Bears on Friday. 
  • At the 25 minute mark, Eva Van Deursen increased the Sun Devil lead to two with a point blank shot from midfield.  
  • ASU continued to put the pressure on Stanford through the remaining 20 minutes of the first frame, finishing the half with four shots
  • Nicole Soto made her season debut at the 32-minute mark
  • The Sun Devils fended off a handful of Cardinal chances to start the second half as Stanford combined for three shots in three minutes
  • The tempo switched in ASU's favor around the 60th minute mark as the Sun Devil offense combined for five shots
  • Kiki Stewart battled for several opportunities late in regulation, but the score remained 2-0 after 90 minutes. 

The Sun Devils head back out on the road next weekend to face Utah on April 9 at 6 p.m. MST followed by a Sunday matinee on April 11 at Colorado with kick-off set for 12 p.m. MST.

Goal 1:


Goal 2:

A WORD WITH WINKWORTH
On the win:
"Phenomenal, it's huge. I'm not sure how many teams in history have beat UCLA, USC, and Stanford in the same season, so for us to do that I am so incredibly proud. The girls keep making me speechless from their efforts and their efforts in practice are unbelievably high and we want to make training harder than games"

On getting an early lead:
"I think it was huge, I think you deflate a team when you can see a goal that early and then for us to score a second one relatively quick afterwards, so for us to score two and then key for me at halftime was making sure we were still on the front foot. Even though we allowed teams like Stanford to have a lot of the possession, we didn't want them to have possession deep in our half so we didn't want our back line to be on the edge of our box, so it was important that we continued to push them up and when Stanford started sending a few longer balls they were running through to Giulia rather than running through their strikers which was very important"

On playing in the heat after the first 25 minutes:
"Just continue doing what you're doing, keep your focus, keep your shape, keep organized, and look for opportunities to hit on the break because they have one of the best right backs, if not the best right back in the country, Kiki Pickett, she's a special player so we wanted to fill the space that she attacks from and I thought we did a good job at that. Sometimes less is more and you don't need to tell them too much cause I didn't want to mess them up"

On Nicole Soto, Anna White, Kiki Stewart:
"I was really proud of her, to sit on the bench for the most part of the season and then come in against the national champions and put in a solid performance like she did, I'm so happy for her, I'm proud of her and she's an extremely professional young lady who works extremely hard, just hasn't had the opportunity to on game day because of the high standards that others have also performed in but she took her opportunity today, did a great job, and gave us another option to put into the back line from a strong performance today and I'm really happy for her. The same with Anna White, Anna has played earlier in the season, but she played significant minutes today because we needed the rotation, it was 97 degrees and she did a wonderful job in the mid field and I'm so happy for those guys. To Kiki as well, I mean how good was Kiki in the last 15 minutes, she was going 1 v 1 with them and almost scored, almost set up a goal. For players to not play many minutes early in the season and then be ready, that shows the strong character that these young ladies have so a big shoutout for Soto, Kiki, and Anna because they were incredible today for the team"

On deserving a spot in the tournament:
"100%, when they make the selection they look at your win/loss record but they also look at your record against the top teams. Two years ago when we were 42nd in the nation and we were very very close, we were on the bubble, we didn't have wins against USC, UCLA, and Stanford. These are very significant wins and it would be my hope that the NCAA committee would take that into consideration when they do make their selections cause I think we'd be a strong representation for the Pac-12"