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Men's Soccer

Conference Commences

On a Roll

For the second consecutive season, Stanford has put together a seven-match win streak following a loss in its opener. The Cardinal’s seven consecutive wins are the second-longest active streak in the nation behind Creighton’s nine.

Only Creighton (9-0-0), Denver (8-0-1) and Elon (8-2-0) have won more games than Stanford this season. The Cardinal’s .875 win percentage is tied for sixth in the country.

When it begins Pac-12 play on Sunday, October 4 at California (4 p.m.; Pac-12 Networks), Stanford will be attempting to win its eighth straight for the first time since it won nine in a row to start the 2001 season.

National Win Streaks (Active)
Team Wins
No. 1 Creighton9
No. 3 Stanford7
No. 14 FIU7
No. 8 Denver6
UNLV6

First Month Moments

Alabi » Bashti » Verso » Morris. Stanford beat Davidson in the 100th to wrap up nonconference action.

Foster Langsdorf scores a winner against San Jose State on a perfect pass from Corey Baird.

He's also a family man.

Adam Mosharrafa scores his first career goal against VCU.

Foster Langsdorf had a goal and an assist against VCU on September 6 and was the epitome of a Stanford student-athlete in his postgame interview on Pac-12 Networks. The video reached over 30,000 people on Facebook.

Langsdorf VCU Interview

Goal, assist and giving credit where it's due »

Posted by Stanford Men's Soccer on Sunday, September 6, 2015

Reigning Pac-12 Champs

Stanford will be returning to the scene of its 2014 Pac-12 Championship when it visits the Golden Bears. In its last conference match, Austin Meyer’s winner in the 103rd minute at Cal on November 16, 2014, lifted the Cardinal to its first league title since 2001, 3-2.

Pac-12 Champs...... #GoStanford

Posted by Stanford Men's Soccer on Sunday, November 16, 2014

The Cardinal closed last year’s Pac-12 schedule with four straight wins to claim its crown. Stanford is 8-1-3 in its last 12 conference matches. Its four consecutive conference wins are currently tied for the fifth-best active streak in the nation.

In 2015, Stanford will attempt to become the first Pac-12 school to win back-to-back conference titles since UCLA in 2011 and 2012.

It's in the Rankings

Stanford currently sits at No. 3 in the NSCAA Top 25 and has been in the top five for each of the past three weeks. It’s the Cardinal’s first three-week stretch among the nation’s top five since 2001-02. Beginning on September 10, 2001, Stanford held on to a top-five ranking for 18 consecutive polls, including six weeks at No. 1.

Stanford Week-by-Week Rankings (NSCAA)
Week Rank
PreseasonNo. 8
September 1No. 16
September 8No. 13
September 15No. 4
September 22No. 3
September 29No. 3

The Cardinal is No. 22, and tops in the Pac-12, in the first official RPI released by the NCAA on Monday. Stanford finished fourth in RPI a season ago, its best in the final report of a season since ending 2002 No. 3 using the NCAA’s official formula.

It's in the Defense

The Cardinal’s defense is among the best in the country early in 2015. Stanford is eighth in the nation in goals against average (0.48) and ninth in shutout percentage (0.63). Andrew Epstein’s 0.490 goals against average leads the Pac-12 and is ninth in the NCAA.

Stanford has already posted five shutouts this season, tied for the 10th most in the country. Earlier this year, the Cardinal put together a shutout streak of 469:38, the program’s longest since 2007 (575:51).

The Cardinal’s domination of possession has taken significant pressure off its back four and goalkeeper. Epstein has only been called upon to make 12 saves this season, an average of 1.50 which is the lowest in college soccer.

Nation's Top Defenses
Team GAA Saves Per Game
St. Francis Brooklyn0.103.00
Coastal Carolina0.284.29
Creighton0.332.11
Western Michigan0.362.38
Saint Francis (PA)0.463.60
Washington0.463.88
Columbia0.473.67
Stanford0.481.50
Lafayette0.513.22
Wright State0.533.22

Stanford has allowed only four goals through its first eight matches, its stingiest defensive start to a season since it only let in three over the same span in 2004.

Always Willing to Help

Stanford is 40th nationally in assists per game (1.75) thanks largely to Corey Baird and Eric Verso. Baird has five total assists and is seventh in the country in average (0.63) while Verso has four overall and is 30th in the NCAA in average (0.50).

All of Baird’s five assists came in a four-match span from September 6 against VCU to September 18 against San Francisco. He was the first Cardinal to register an assist in four consecutive games since Roger Levesque in 2002.

Morris Magic

Jordan Morris keeps doing Jordan Morris things. The junior leads Stanford with four goals, including one in each of the Cardinal’s last three matches, and his 0.57 goals per game average is 45th in the country.

For his country in the last few months, the junior came on for USMNT forward Jozy Altidore in the 57th minute of a friendly against Brazil in Foxborough, Massachusetts on September 8. He is currently with the U.S. Under-23 Men’s National Team attempting to qualify for the 2016 Olympics. Morris’ brace carried the Americans to a 3-1 victory over Canada in their first match on Thursday night.

Morris, a Type 1 diabetic, is also lending his support to Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation’s (JDRF) “T1D Looks Like Me Campaign” for National Diabetes Awareness Month (NDAM) in November. Among a number of different pieces to the awareness push, Morris will be featured in a Times Square display ad the first week of the month.

Using Their Heads

Stanford isn’t dominating just on the pitch. The Cardinal was honored with the NSCAA Team Academic Award last week and the program’s APR (996) is No. 1 among the nation’s five top-ranked teams.

On September 15, the Cardinal took advantage of its positioning in a global center for innovation and tech development and visited Facebook, meeting with staffers and getting a tour of campus.

Facebook Visit

Right in our backyard »

Posted by Stanford Men's Soccer on Monday, September 21, 2015