PALO ALTO, Calif. — After their overtime victory at UCLA on Thursday, the UC Santa Barbara Men's Soccer team has another former Pac-12 member in their sights, traveling to face No. 16 seed Stanford in the second round of the NCAA Tournament on Sunday. It will be the first-ever NCAA Tournament meeting between the Gauchos and Cardinal, who are two of three California-based teams remaining in this year's big dance.
 
WHEN AND WHERE TO WATCH
Kickoff is scheduled for 5 p.m. on Sunday from Stanford's Cagan Stadium in Palo Alto. Tickets are on sale now and can be purchased by visiting ucsbgauchos.com/tickets. Rain is in the forecast for the weekend, but fans can stay dry inside and still catch all the action by watching live on ESPN+ or by following along with live stats through ucsbgauchos.com.
 
POSTSEASON HISTORY
The Gauchos and Cardinal have never played each other in the Men's NCAA Tournament before, though Santa Barbara and Stanford's women's teams met in the first round of their NCAA Tournament this year, with the Cardinal emerging victorious. The Gaucho men will look to exact a measure of revenge on Sunday.
 
Neither Santa Barbara nor Stanford is a stranger to the NCAA Tournament; the Cardinal have three national championships and the Gauchos one. Both teams also have winning records in the NCAA Tournament; Santa Barbara is 22-13-1 overall while Stanford is 32-16-10 all-time. The Gauchos advanced on penalty kicks after their one draw, while the Cardinal advanced in eight of their 10 penalty shootouts, though they lost their most recent one. Santa Barbara is 8-5 in their 13 previous second-round matches and 7-10 on the road in the national postseason. Stanford is 11-1-3 in the second round, having been knocked out at this stage of the competition only once. The team that sent them packing was Santa Barbara's Big West conference-mate, UC Irvine, back in 2014.
 
GAUCHOS TO KNOW
Of the Gauchos who traveled to UCLA on Thursday night, five played in Santa Barbara's last match against Stanford back in 2022: Rene Pacheco, Pablo Figueroa, Filip Basili, Caden Vom Steeg and Alexis Ledoux. Ledoux, Vom Steeg and Basili each earned All-Big West honors for the Gauchos this season and started on Thursday night against the Bruins. Ledoux, The Big West Offensive Player of the Year, has been the spark plug of Santa Barbara's attack and has been given the freedom to run into whatever space he can find in the final third this season, leading to one of the best single-season goal hauls (14) in program history. However, the Frenchman is looking to snap his longest goalless streak of the season, having not scored (or assisted) in his last four games.
 
Basili earned an All-Big West Honorable Mention for his work in the Gauchos' midfield, where he can play from box to box, contributing to both the defense and the attack. He is enjoying a career year with a goal and five assists on the season, sitting second on the team in the latter category, behind only Kaden Standish. Standish was on the bench for all 90 minutes of regulation on Thursday night but needed less than three minutes of overtime to register his sixth assist of the year, setting up Nicolas Willumsen's game-winning goal.
 
Willumsen's score, his sixth of the season, was just another clutch moment for the Dane, who also earned All-Big West Honorable Mention after a strong conference campaign. It was his goal that gave the Gauchos their first win in Irvine since 2015 back in October. Willumsen's fellow Dane, Mikkel Goeling, was named to the All-Big West First Team this year.
 
Speaking of Scandinavians, the Swedish Calle Mollerberg has been excellent all season long in the Santa Barbara back line, earning All-Big West Second Team and All-Freshman Team honors this season. Both of the Gauchos' fullbacks, Vom Steeg (Honorable Mention) and Peleg Brown (All-Freshman) earned All-Big West nods this season, as did goalkeeper David Mitzner (Honorable Mention). Haruki Utsumi rounded out the defensive unit that kept a clean sheet against UCLA on Thursday night.
 
SCOUTING THE CARDINAL
Stanford (9-5-4, 3-2-3 ACC) managed to snag an at-large bid and the No. 16 overall seed in the tournament despite a rough end to their season, winning just one game since the start of October: their Atlantic Coast Conference Championship first round match against Notre Dame, which they needed a last-second goal from their own half to pull off. However, thanks to their strong schedule, the Cardinal finished the season ranked at No. 11 in the Ratings Percentage Index (RPI).
 
Midfielder Zach Bohane was Stanford's lone All-ACC honoree, earning a spot on the all-conference First Team. With five goals and three assists, he is the Cardinal's leader in both points and goals, though scoring is not exactly Stanford's strength. The Cardinal ranks 70^th among all Division I teams in scoring offense, averaging 1.61 goals per game. The Gauchos rank 57^th.
 
What Stanford does well is defend. With a team goals-against average of exactly one, the Cardinal has the 33^rd ranked scoring defense in the country, though they kept the same number of clean sheets as Santa Barbara in the regular season: six. Goalkeeper Rowan Schnebly has been between the sticks for every game for Stanford this season.
 
 Other Cardinal players to know include forwards Jackson Kiil, who scored against Santa Barbara the last time these teams met, as well as forward Shane De Flores and midfielder Fletcher Bank, who both earned ACC Player of the Week awards this year.
 
UP NEXT
The winner of Sunday evening's match will advance to the third round, where they will face either Western Michigan or No. 1 seed Ohio State on Nov. 30 or Dec. 1.