MALIBU, California — The Pepperdine women's soccer team will try to break out of its early-season struggles this weekend, but the Waves face perhaps their biggest challenge of the season on Friday night at #7 UCLA before coming home to face St. John's on Sunday.
MATCH #6 — Friday (September 7) at Wallis Annenberg Stadium in Los Angeles, California: Pepperdine (1-4) at #7 UCLA (2-1-1) at 7 p.m.
MATCH #7 — Sunday (September 9) at Tari Frahm Rokus Field in Malibu, California: Pepperdine vs. St. John's (3-3, plays at Long Beach State on Friday) at 1 p.m.
WATCH/ONLINE — The UCLA game will be shown live on the Pac-12 Network. Christian Miles and Tammy Blackburn are the broadcasters. Sunday's game will be streamed live via WaveCasts on TheW.tv. Darren Preston has the call. Links to both broadcasts and live stats can be found at PepperdineWaves.com.
OPPONENTS — Pepperdine is 3-18-3 all-time vs. UCLA, and 2-9-1 in road matches. Last year, the two teams tied 1-1 in Westwood, though the Bruins would go on to be the NCAA runner-up with a 19-3-3 record. Pepperdine's last win in the series came in 2010, a 1-0 victory at UCLA. After beating Long Beach State and #3 Penn State to start the season, the Bruins went on the road and tied #22 Florida 0-0 before losing at #4 Florida State, 4-1, last weekend ... This will be the first meeting between Pepperdine and St. John's. The Red Storm are 0-3 in road games entering this weekend but are coming off a 5-1 home victory over Stony Brook.
LAST WEEK — The Waves' rough start to the season continued with a 2-1 home loss to Indiana last Friday. The Hoosiers scored first in the 25th minute, but
Brie Welch came back less than two minutes later with her first goal of the season. Indiana got what turned out to be the game-winner in the 66th minute, however. The Waves outshot the Hoosiers 18-13.
NOTABLE — Three of the Waves' four losses are to teams in this week's top 25 (#4 USC, #16 Kansas, #25 Texas Tech) ... Six potential starters have already missed at least one game due to injury, and nine in all have missed playing time ... Pepperdine has had five Waves make their first career starts, and 10 of the 26 players that have seen action have been true freshmen or redshirt freshmen ... The loss to USC was Pepperdine's first at home since 2016, as the Waves were 9-0-2 in their last 11 at Tari Frahm Rokus Field ... In that game, the Waves also gave up their first home goal since 2016, a span of more than 950 minutes (including 10 consecutive shutouts) ... Non-conference opponents won 60% of their games last season (106-66-27).
TICKETS — Single-game tickets at Tari Frahm Rokus Field cost $10 each for adults and $8 each for children under 12, seniors 65+ and alumni/Crest members. Groups of 10 or more can purchase tickets for $5 each.
NEXT — On the next-to-last weekend of non-conference play, the Waves visit San Diego State on September 14, and then host UC Irvine on September 16.
