By Sofia Wright — Staff Writer
In sports, some losses are more excusable than others. An “excusable loss” is what the San Jose State men’s soccer team (0-7) experienced against No. 1 Stanford (7-0) on Tuesday night, losing 3-0.
For the first 45 minutes, the game was tied at 0-0. At that point, it was anyone’s game. The Spartans were able to control the ball well and hold long possessions, but couldn’t get the ball in the back of the net. It wasn’t until the 52nd minute that things began to fall apart.
Seen in the past few games, the Spartans have conceded a second goal right after the first. Here, after the first score, Stanford scored again in less than two minutes.
“You know the script, our reaction after a goal has been poor,” said head coach Simon Tobin. “But there were some good things about tonight … it’s very hard to dominate lots of the play against the No. 1 team and we did.”
Even with a scoreless first half, SJSU had multiple missed opportunities meaning they were well in the game.
In the first half, both the Spartans and the Cardinal had two corners. But what the two teams didn’t share were the seven fouls Stanford had committed, which proved to be opportunities not taken advantage of.
“It was just a game of missed opportunities to be honest,” said junior midfielder Max Allen. “We just need to take football back to its simplest form, defend and just win second balls. We didn’t do that well in that game like Stanford did well.”
In the second half, Stanford began to dominate. And as Stanford’s forward Gabe Segal scored the third goal, heads began to droop and hands went on the hips of the Spartans.
By the end of the game, Stanford outshot SJSU 21-6.
Although the Spartans have gone 0-7 thus far, not every loss has been a bad loss. Stanford, being No. 1 in the country, was going to be a tough competitor and proved rightly so.
“You never feel good with a record so it does play on your mind,” Tobin said on how the team is feeling right now. “But they are smart enough to know that they are playing quite well, but there’s some things we have to address.”
Now that a challenging last few games are through, the Spartans look to bring the heat to conference play. They start the season off at home against CSU Bakersfield this Saturday. The match is set to start at 7:00 p.m.
Follow Sofia on Twitter @sofiagwright