Coming off an incredibly tough road trip that saw the Sun Devils fall in back-to-back games to No. 2 Stanford and No. 22 Cal, ASU will look to build off some positive takeaways after playing two of the top-teams in the nation.
"Firstly Stanford, I think they're the best team in the country right now with the best player in the country," head coach Graham Winkworth said of the Cardinal. "They play some fantastic soccer. We had a defensive mindset in that match and I thought the girls were very disciplined, well organized, and did a fantastic job against really talented opponents. All credit to Stanford for winning the championship because it's a very well deserved championship, and credit to our girls for the effort that they put in and the discipline that they showed defensively for large periods of that match."
"In the game Sunday against Cal we started extremely well. We scored a nice goal in the first minute. Again, we were organized defensively and created a few chances in the first half and really should have gone 2-0 up, but we weren't clinical enough in front of goal. Then we lost Christina Edwards for the remainder of the game, and unfortunately the area she was playing in is where they created both their goals, so that was a bit of a heartbreaker for us. Despite the results, it was a positive weekend all in all though, some good things for sure."
The Sun Devils will be looking to capitalize on a steady improvement shown by the team in the last few weeks in a heated rivalry match at Arizona Friday night.
The Wildcats enter Friday's match looking to end the season on a high note, and boost their NCAA Tournament resume. Currently boasting a 10-6-1 record on the season and sitting at No. 40 in the latest RPI rankings released this week, the Wildcats will be looking to get back to their winning ways after falling to Stanford, 6-2, in their last outing. Junior forward Jada Talley has been a force on offense all season, becoming the first Wildcat in program history to have nine goals and eight assists in one season, while also securing three multi-goal matches already this season. Defensively, the Wildcats have proven to be an incredibly difficult team to score goals on. Entering this week, Arizona is No. 13 in the nation with a 0.509 goals-against average on the year.
"We just have to be brave in possession of the ball," Winkworth said of Friday's matchup with the Wildcats. "We're expecting to face quite a lot and we'll probably have to head the ball a lot, so we're going to have to be prepared to face those attacks and win second balls. But then when we win possession of the ball, we need to be brave and complete passes and also be brave in the fact that we need to commit numbers forward, as we tried against California. It's an exciting game any time that you play Arizona. They're very well coached, a very talented team. It is an in-state rivalry match, so any time that we get an opportunity to play a game like that in front of a lot of fans, I'm sure they'll be out there, it's a lot of fun for the ladies."
The match, an already important one due to the rivalry, will be made that much more special for the 2019 senior class, who will be competing in their final regular-season match.
"This is a really special group to me," Winkworth said of this year's seniors. "They've been really hard working, loyal, high performers on and off the field. This is a group that really epitomizes what we want from a student-athlete at ASU. They're talented but they're also great people. They'll be the first ones that volunteer when it comes to getting out in the community and serving the public and they're just amazing people. So for us to send them off with a victory would be really special to me."
With a win, ASU would snap a three-game slide to the Wildcats, and improve their overall record against Arizona to 18-5-1. Despite their recent success, UA has never won four-straight over ASU in the rivalries' 23 year history. In fact, it is ASU who has enjoyed the longest streak of success in the overall series, with the Sun Devils emerging victorious in eight-straight meetings from 1996-2002.
Fans can follow all of the action from Friday's match in Tucson by following @SunDevilSoccer on Twitter and Instagram.