University of Washington
Oregon State
Huskies Prove Why They Deserve Spot In NCAA Tourney
November 11, 2011 | Men's Soccer
Nov. 11, 2011
SEATTLE - The No. 19/20 UW men's soccer team earned another shutout and hopes its winning streak of seven out of eight games and a 12-4-2 record will be good enough to get them into the NCAA Tournament. The NCAA Selection Show is on NCAA.com at 1:30 pt Monday.
UW was a bubble team in 2010 and just missed out on making the tournament so the team is hungrier than ever to get in and is confident that they have been impressive throughout the season and deserve a bid.
On senior day where the Huskies honored seven, including two of TopDrawerSoccer.com's top seniors in the country and MLS prospects, Jacob Hustedt and Brent Richards, UW got a 3-0 shutout over Oregon State.
"It was senior day and the seniors were brilliant so it was a really nice way to go out," said head coach Jamie Clark. "It was a huge win for us. You want to put a stamp on it and 3-0 does it. We couldn't have ended the regular season any better. There is no team, probably other than UCLA, in the country that is hotter than us right now. We are winning games comfortably and it's a fun team to watch. We have been getting ranked and the attention in the polls so hopefully that is good enough."
The Huskies got two goals in the first half and one in the second and had 22 total shots. Goalkeeper Spencer Richey (Seattle, Wash.) and the Husky defense allowed two shots on goal. Richey recorded his ninth shutout of the season and lowered his GAA to 0.75. Richey ranks eighth in a single season in the category and is tied for fourth with Husky great Bill May in shutouts on the season. He is just one shutout away from cracking the top five all-time.
In their last eight games, the Huskies have outscored opponents 13-6, beating No. 20 San Diego State, Stanford and Cal twice and falling in a tight 1-0 game at No. 10 UCLA.
Junior Quinton Beasley (Camas, Wash.) scored the first goal, unassisted, after he was one-on-one with the keeper on the right side of the box and got past the keeper to tap it in.
The second goal came on a long pass from senior Jamie Finch (Bothell, Wash.) in Husky territory up to Hustedt (Sandy, Utah) who beat out a defender as the goalie came out to the 18. Hustedt kicked it in the wide open goal. Two minutes later Hustedt got passed the keeper again but hit the right post. Just a minute later Richards (Camas, Wash.) sent a nice pass to Hustedt but it was saved by the OSU keeper.
The final goal came off of a corner kick by Finch, who earned his second assist on the night. He sent it in on the right side to senior Casey McCool (Bend, Ore.) who tapped it in.
"I'm so happy and so relieved that we got that win," said Finch. "It was never going to be easy, OSU is hard to play against, but I think we always believed we were going to get this win and this is what we thought it was going to take to get into the playoffs. We are really looking forward to Monday to see if we get in. Hopefully we should be in but you never know."
UW had several other great shots in the game by senior Abdul Aman, freshman Charlie Ranahan, Quinn Grisham and Chad Wissing, all off the bench.
Richards leads the Huskies with 10 goals and 25 points on the season. Hustedt netted his sixth goal of the season in the game and also has five assists. McCool and Beasley scored their fifth and third goals of the season, respectively.
Richards is one of the most complete players, academically and athletically in UW men's soccer history. He has led UW in goals, shots, points and game-winning goals in each of his four seasons.
