Page One

Cal men’s soccer has started a new win streak. 

The fifteenth-ranked Golden Bears, who lost 2-1 at UCLA last weekend to end a school-record nine-game winning streak, upset No. 7 Stanford, 1-0, Saturday at Edwards Stadium. Defender Troy Roberts nodded a Noal Merl free kick past Stanford goalkeeper Andrew Terris in the 42nd minute for his first goal of the season. Cal goalie Josh Saunders made four saves to extend his Pac-10 Conference shutout lead to seven. 

With the win, Cal improves its record to 11-3-1 (4-1 Pac-10), while Stanford falls to 11-3-1 (2-2-1 Pac-10). The eleven wins are Cal’s most under third-year coach Kevin Grimes. 

The result also marked Cal’s first win over Stanford since 1996, when the Bears won, 2-1, in Berkeley.  

“We were confident we could pull out a victory against these guys,” Roberts said. “We’re a different team this year. We played them pretty aggressively, kept the pressure on them basically the whole game and outworked them.” 

This is the third straight game in which Stanford failed to score. Coach Bret Simon’s squad was coming off a 0-0 tie with Fresno State and a 1-0 loss to UCLA. 

Since the Pac-10 requires its teams to play each other twice a season, the Cardinal gets a shot at revenge when the two teams play each other again on Friday down on the Farm. 

Besides ending Stanford’s recent unbeaten streak in the series, this win is impressive because the Cardinal is one of the nation’s elite teams. Stanford reached the NCAA semifinals last season and has wins over nationally ranked SMU, Portland and Santa Clara so far this year. Stanford’s success helped to elevate it into the top 10 of the NSCAA coaches’ poll, which is considered the official poll of college soccer. By contrast, Cal is unranked in the coaches’ poll and is only ranked by Soccer America Magazine. 

Grimes tried to play down the hoopla of the Stanford match. 

“There’s an extra special feeling when Cal plays Stanford, but our focus this week was to treat this match like any other tough opponent, be it San Jose State, Santa Clara or Stanford,” Grimes said. “We didn’t want to make any extra big deal out of the game. In fact, [Cal officials] wanted to paint a big Cal logo in the middle of the field today, and I told them not to because I didn’t want it to be anything different than we had this year.” 

Stanford had 6-3 edge in shots in the first 45 minutes, but had just one good scoring chance, Kevin Coyne’s first-time volley in the 37th minute that Saunders saved. 

Despite the shot disparity, Cal played confidently and enjoyed a big edge in possession in the first half. 

A Stanford foul on midfielder Mike Munoz set up the goal. Munoz takes most of Cal’s free kicks, but since he was shaken up on the play, Merl took the free kick. From 35 yards out on the left flank, Merl sent a swerving ball to the far post, and Roberts rose up over the Cardinal defense to connect on the header. 

“Noah played a great ball,” Roberts said. “I just ran onto it and hit it in.” 

Stanford pushed more players into the attack in the second half, but Cal actually created more chances, forcing Terris to make four of his five saves after halftime. 

The Cardinal had a goal called back in the 60th minute, when forward Matt Janusz buried a shot into the lower right corner of Cal’s net only to be ruled offside. Stanford’s best chance came on its only shot on goal of the second half, as forward Roger Levesque fired an eight-yard header right at Saunders. Levesque, an All-America candidate, had his team’s last good chance, another shot from inside Cal’s penalty area that went wide left in the 88th minute. 

Simon was impressed with the Bears’ effort. 

“Cal has a good team this year, and their goalkeeping is excellent,” he said. “Josh Saunders is one of the better goalkeepers in the country this year.”