STANFORD, Calif. – Stanford scored twice in the first half, its defense held firm and the No. 3 Cardinal knocked off visiting Denver, 2-0, before a capacity crowd of 2,304 on Friday night.
The win was Stanford's fourth in a row to open the season and was also the 100th on The Farm for Knowles Family Director of Men's Soccer Jeremy Gunn. A four-time Pac-12 Coach of the Year and the 2017 National Coach of the Year, his teams are 100-29-23 (.734) in his eight seasons at Stanford. He is the second to win at least 100 matches as coach of the Cardinal. Fred Priddle went 133-119-23 from 1954-75.
"I'm more concerned with how the game went tonight," Gunn said matter-of-factly after the victory. "Those milestones are things you'll look back on when you get older. We don't celebrate individual accolades that much in this program. It's all about the team and tonight I'm happy that we played some really exciting soccer."
Stanford certainly did that as it kept its unblemished record intact through four games. The Cardinal struck first in the 23rd minute when freshman Ousseni Bouda was taken down in the box by the Pioneers' Bailey Heller. Heller was shown a yellow and Tanner Beason stepped up and buried the penalty, his third of the season.
Just five minutes later, Logan Panchot lofted a ball into the box that was knocked away by Denver keeper Will Palmquist. It was batted around a bit until it fell to the feet of Zach Ryan in the middle of the penalty area. Ryan wound up and launched his no-doubter into the back of the net for his third score in as many games.
"At the start, Denver had possession and kept it very well," Gunn said. "We weren't attacking as we'd like, but they also weren't hurting us. Once we got the ball moving, we looked really fluid and played some wonderful soccer. We really got going in the remainder of the first half, the goals obviously got us into a good position and that extra confidence helped us out the rest of the way."
Stanford moved to 46-6-10 (.823) at home since 2014 with the win and lowered its goals against average in Cagan Stadium over the last five seasons to 0.51.
The shutout was the Cardinal's third in four games to open the season and were it not for a deflected shot at Akron the team could easily have four clean sheets thus far.
"It's not just the defenders, it's an entire unit," Gunn added. "We've laid down that marker. We want to be electrifying on the ball when we're attacking and we want to be the hardest working team in the country to play against when we're defending."
Stanford welcomes American into town on Sunday at 3 p.m. before opening conference play on Friday, Sept. 20 at Cal (4:30 p.m.).
