Lady Heels crush UCLA 7-2 in home opener

North Carolina vs UCLA (Jeffrey A Camarati)

I have to say that as I wrote the small little blog yesterday about top ranked North Carolina facing third ranked UCLA in the home opener for the Lady Heels in soccer I was a bit worried. Being the first game of the season there could be just some rust from the off season, there could be some need to regain chemistry, there could be many factors. Well, no need to worry about that, as North Carolina (1-0) beat UCLA (0-1) handly by the final tally of 7 to 2, and from the sounds of it, the game was over with less than 15 minutes played. From what I have read on the official web site of UNC Athletics the scoring was balanced, as six Carolina players scored the seven goals, and the team was just playing well from the start. From the looks of it the only bad thing in this game was the weather, but in all 3,300 fans were on hand to watch the Lady Heels’ first game of the season, and they got one heck of a treat!

One thing that really popped out at me was that while one of the goal was unassisted, out of the remaining six goals there were eight assists to be handed out. Showing once again how head coach Anson Dorrance loves the team concept and the players love playing that way. Of course it does not hurt to have two seniors such as forward Casey Nogueira (2 goals on the day) and midfielder Tobin Heath (goal and assist) leading the way for your squad. In all the Lady Heels played 21 players of which 20 played 15 or more minutes of the game, showing how much the coaching staff believes in the whole squad and not just the starting eleven. Heath was the only player for coach Dorrance to stay in the game for the whole 90 minutes.

For the play by play of the game you can check it out here. Check out the goal scorers below:

Goal Scorers from UNC vs UCLA (TarHeelBlue.com)

Now the Lady Heels will have a bit of a rest as they get ready this coming Friday/Saturday as they host the Carolina Nike Classic. In the first day it’s going to be UNC vs UCF as the night capper (7:00 p.m. EST), the game before is Duke vs UNC Greensboro (5 p.m.). The following day it will be Duke vs UCF at 1:00 p.m. followed by UNC vs UNC Greensboro at 3:00 p.m.

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