STANFORD, Calif. – Zach Batteer scored his first of the season, Brandon Vincent added a goal in his third straight game and the Cardinal back line didn't allow a single shot on frame as the No. 15 Stanford men's soccer team used a dominating performance to dispatch San Diego State, 2-0, at Cagan Stadium on Thursday night.
The result moves Stanford's record to 8-2-0 overall and 2-1-0 in Pac-12 play. The Cardinal is off to its best start since winning nine of its first 10 games in 2002, the last time the program advanced to the NCAA College Cup. Thursday's victory was also Stanford's sixth straight at home, a spurt not seen on The Farm since 2001-02.
"They've worked incredibly hard as individual athletes, but even more so as a team to understand what we're trying to do," third-year Stanford head coach Jeremy Gunn said of his program's development. "These things take time to click. It won't always click, but tonight's first-half performance was truly dominant against a very, very good team. [SDSU] played another conference opponent the other day and it was very tight and stagnant with very few chances."
Thursday's affair was anything but. Just 21 seconds after the opening whistle, Batteer used his patented run to the end line to free up freshman Foster Langsdorf for a chance in the box that went wide. Austin Meyer had an attempt blocked, Ty Thompson sent one a bit outside the post, a Batteer header went wide and Langsdorf sent one high all within the game's first 20 minutes.
Batteer, an earth systems major, used his first errant header as a test run, successfully scoring in the 22nd minute on a picturesque dive. Austin Meyer settled the ball just behind midfield and sent Jimmy Callinan on a surging run down the right flank. Callinan whipped in a cross to the back post and perfectly on to Batteer's brow, who was parallel with the turf.
The senior-to-senior-to-senior connection produced Batteer's first goal of the season and 17th of his career.
"Zach has had a goal coming for him for a long time," the captain Callinan said. "It's been a few games now. He definitely deserved that one and the team did as well. We were working towards that. The easy ones that don't go in, that'll happen, but Zach's goal was a goal scorer's goal. That was quality."
In the opening 45 minutes, Stanford outshot SDSU (6-5-0, 0-2-0) 10-3, won six corners to the Aztecs' one and continually possessed and relentlessly pressed the ball forward. The numbers were just as lopsided at the final whistle: 21 to five in shots, four to zero in shots-on-goal and nine to one in corners.
Hide the children RT @Pac12Networks: Does @StanfordMSoccer's Brandon Vincent have a howitzer for a leg? http://t.co/1boHyUJPcS
— J.R. Eskilson (@JREskilson) October 10, 2014
Brandon Vincent put the proverbial nail in the coffin in the 72nd, using his cannon of a left leg to rocket a shot under the cross bar and through the hand of San Diego State keeper Adam Allmaras. It was the captain's team-leading fifth goal of the season and the sixth of his career after entering 2014 with just one score in 38 previous matches.
"The fullbacks have been playing with incredible maturity," Gunn said. "They're absolutely rock solid defensively and are also flying into the attack and enjoying getting forward. Right now you can't get the ball off Brandon. He just keeps wanting to take shots. If the keeper hadn't gotten in the way of his shot I think it would still be traveling right now. It was an absolute rocket."
While Vincent was adding to the attack, he was also leading a robust defensive effort for the Cardinal. San Diego State tallied five shots, but each lacked any real quality.
In the 63rd, center back Tomas Hilliard-Arce may have made the play of the game as the Aztecs' Bryce Flores got free after tangling legs with a Stanford defender. The Cardinal fell to the ground and Flores was racing towards Andrew Epstein one-on-one, looking good for the equalizer, until Hilliard-Arce came out of nowhere. The freshman sprinted 25 yards across the field to cut Flores down, poke the ball aside and elicit and rousing ovation from the nearly 1,000 in attendance.
Stanford returns to the pitch on Sunday at 5 p.m. when it hosts No. 2/3 UCLA at Cagan Stadium in a match televised on the Pac-12 Networks.