USD Backing Up Tough Talk with Tougher Defense : Soccer: Buoyed by victory over UCLA, Toreros are confident going into Sunday’s NCAA quarterfinal against Indiana.
These University of San Diego guys obviously weren’t paying attention to the newspapers last week with all that Mutts-R-Us stuff.
Or maybe they were and realized it simply doesn’t matter.
After the USD men’s soccer team inflicted a 2-1 loss on UCLA in the second round of the NCAA playoffs on Sunday, Coach Seamus McFadden boasted that USD’s quarterfinal opponent would be a knock-over.
“We’re going to take Indiana,” he said. “We’re good enough.”
Now McFadden’s enthusiasm is spreading throughout the team.
“We have a lot of confidence,” said junior Scott Garlick. “I do think we’ll beat them, and if we play well, I think we can beat them by three or four goals.”
There are some things you never tell a pen-wielding sportswriter--things that could inspire opponents to restock their arsenal.
If Indiana is so inspired, Garlick will be the first to field the Hoosiers’ shots--he’s the goalie; a goalie on whom USD’s entire season seemed to pivot.
The Toreros were 6-2 in mid-October when they entered the Las Vegas tournament. In the first game, they went up, 3-0, in the first half against UNLV but then collapsed and fell, 5-3, in overtime.
That was the last game Tom Tate started in goal for USD.
“We really should have put away UNLV and we didn’t do it,” McFadden said. “You have to re-evaluate after a loss, and that’s what we did. We thought maybe we needed a change of scenery, and it worked. Not that it was all the goalkeeper’s fault, but we needed to make a change.”
The call went to Garlick for the tournament’s second game against Michigan State, and Garlick came through with his fourth career shutout, 4-0.
“It was a good feeling,” Garlick said earlier this week. “It was a confidence builder--I knew I was back.”
If the 1991 season were five seconds shorter, Garlick never would have lost his starting job. But in the last five seconds of USD’s last game of 1991, Garlick went up to clear a shot away from the goal. When he came down on his right leg, he heard a snap.
It was the sound of his anterior cruciate ligament ripping apart. It needed surgical reconstruction, and, doctors said, it would be nine months before Garlick could start playing soccer.
That turned out to be a pretty good estimate. When Garlick started against Michigan State, it was eight months after his sophomore season ended prematurely.
“I was definitely nervous (against Michigan State),” Garlick said. “I hadn’t been on a field in so long. But I wasn’t second-guessing myself--I had worked hard to get there.”
After shutting out Michigan State, Garlick went on to compile a 0.83 goals-against average in 12 games, six of which were shutouts, and on Tuesday was named the West Coast Conference’s goalie of the year.
But no one--including Garlick--is heaping all the credit on the goalie from Phoenix. When McFadden decided to make the switch, he also had a talk with the rest of the team and told his players he didn’t like their sneaking up on the offensive half of the field, leaving the back unguarded.
“We needed to tighten things,” McFadden said. “We are a very, very offensive team, but when everyone’s moving forward, and not wanting to play defense, well, we addressed that when we changed the goalies, so it was a two-way change.”
Garlick acknowledges that his defense created that microscopic goals-against average, and even did all the work for a 3-0 shutout against Portland in the final regular-season game. USD needed a victory by at least two goals in that game to advance to the playoffs, an unlikely outcome considering Portland enlists Yari Allnutt, one of the conference’s top scoring threats and a member of the U.S. Olympic team.
“I didn’t have to do anything against Portland,” Garlick said. “Scott Farley just totally shut down Yari Allnutt. He shut down an Olympian. Scott just never gives up. Ten minutes into that game, Allnutt gave him a head butt, a really cheap shot. Farley’s lip swelled up, but it made him fight even harder.
“That’s just the kind of defense I have--they give 115% of every minute of every game.”
Against UCLA, USD’s best defenders were behind Garlick--the two posts and crossbar. Three UCLA shots hit off the framework and kept UCLA from capitalizing on its best scoring opportunities.
“Hey,” Garlick said, “in soccer you need a lot of skill and a lot of hard work, but you also need a lot of luck. In the past, UCLA had all the luck. This time we did.”
Since upsetting No. 5-ranked UCLA, the West’s top-seeded team, USD’s good fortune has turned into good cheer, and now school officials expect a third-consecutive full house for Sunday’s quarterfinal game.
“People have been coming up to me all week and saying ‘good luck,’ ” Garlick said. “And that helps tremendously. I think, ‘How can we lose with a great crowd like that?’ A lot of people are changing their (Thanksgiving) travel reservations to come back early so they can see the game.”
USD Soccer Notes
Tickets ($6 and $4) for Sunday’s NCAA quarterfinal game against Indiana, 1 p.m. at USD’s Torero Stadium, will be available Saturday from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. at the University Center box office. They also will be available 11:15 a.m. the day of the game at the stadium box office.
