With its Pac-12 championship already secured, No. 8 Stanford continued its dominant three-year conference run with a 2-1 overtime win at Cal on Friday afternoon.
Foster Langsdorf bagged his fifth winner of the season on a header in the 98th minute to deliver the Cardinal (11-3-4, 8-1-1 Pac-12) its school-record eighth league victory.
Derek Waldeck lofted a ball in the direction of the back post from nearly 30 yards out to the head of Drew Skundrich. Stanford’s junior co-captain guided it back across goal to Langsdorf at the top of the six, whose second header beat a leaping Jonathan Klinsmann and sent the Cardinal into celebration.
“It’s a tremendous result and a great way to close out the regular season,” Stanford head coach Jeremy Gunn said. “As always, Cal is a threatening team with some excellent players. In the end our players continued to work and continued to drive to victory in the end. Now we look forward to the postseason and are excited to see what’s around the corner for us.”
In winning three consecutive conference championships, Stanford has gone 21-3-6 in league play since 2014 and 42-8-10 overall during that span. The Cardinal is also 6-0-1 in its last seven games against Cal (5-10-2, 1-8-1 Pac-12).
Stanford was forced into its eighth overtime of the season when Cal’s Trevor Long took the ball to the endline and scored from a tight angle in the 56th minute.
The Cardinal’s Amir Bashti netted his second of the year just eight minutes in when a quick poke intercepted a pass to Cal’s right back. Bashti dribbled to the top left corner of the six and fired a rocket to the opposite corner to nudge Stanford to an early advantage.
Stanford was the aggressor all afternoon. The Cardinal fired off 16 shots to Cal’s eight and put 12 on frame to the Bears’ two.
“We started very brightly,” Gunn added. “In the first half we created some good chances, deserved to go a goal up and it certainly looked like we could have had one or two more. Cal managed to get the tying goal and the game came alive, but again we managed to get the ball back and continued to create. We have to take our hat off to the Cal goalkeeper, Klinsmann, for making a number of tremendous saves.”
Langsdorf nearly scored in the 13th with a run down the right flank at Klinsmann, but was denied. Senior Trevor Hyman had virtually the same look 25 minutes later but Cal’s keeper came up with one of his 10 saves.
In the 58th Jared Gilbey smacked a bounding ball out of the air from the top of the 18 that was stopped and Skundrich nearly had the winner in the 66th when he cut one back in the box to his right foot and powered a shot sent away by a sprawling Klinsmann.
Stanford, which locked up the league’s automatic bid by virtue of its conference title, will wait until Monday to hear its postseason schedule.
By Stanford Athletics
By Stanford Athletics
By Stanford Athletics