Santa Clara got 14 saves from keeper Melissa Lowder and held off a wave of Stanford attacks before defeating the No. 1 seed Cardinal, 1-0, on Jenna Holtz‘s first goal of the year in the108th minute. It was Santa Clara’s first win over Stanford in the NCAA Tournament since 2004.
Natalie Kennedy sent a ball across the field to Holtz, who was alone in the box,where she scored on a deflection off the a defender.
“I’m very proud of my team today,” Santa Clara coach Jerry Smith said. “I thought they had a very disciplined effort. It wasn’tgoing to take a perfect plan to win, but we had to limit the number of mistakes and we were able to do that. They followed the game plan perfectly. We knew Stanford would have more possession than usand that they would probably outshoot us, but the objective was try to find a way to win the game and we did that.”
Stanford outshot the Broncos, 31-3, but was shut out for only thesecond time in 2016.
“Melissa was amazing,” Smith said. “The quality of shots she faced were tremendous. They were hit with pace and had movement on them. We knew part of what it wouldtake to win was amazing goalkeeping. She was rock-solid today and made so many saves for us. She kept us in the game the entire night.”
It is the first time Stanford has been eliminatedbefore the third round since 2005 and snapped its 30-game postseason home unbeaten streak.
“I was proud of the team’s effort,” said Stanford coach PaulRatcliffe. “They had a really strong and dominant performance but at the end of day you need to score and we weren’t able to do that.”
The Santa Clara goal was about as fluky as you can get.