Preview: Santa Maria vs. McLane
The Santa Maria Saints will head out on the road to challenge the McLane Highlanders at 6:00 p.m. on Friday. Both teams come into the matchup bolstered by wins in their previous matches.
It can be hard to translate regular season success to the playoffs, but Santa Maria had no problem doing just that on Wednesday. They narrowly escaped with a win as the squad sidled past the Cougars 2-1. The result kept Santa Maria happy, as they haven't lost a game since January 26th.
They were led to victory by the tag-team duo of
Nathan Gomez and
Ronaldo Ayala, who scored both of Santa Maria's goals. The pair have combined for a total of six so far this season.
Meanwhile, McLane put the finishing touches on their ninth blowout victory of the season on Thursday. Everything went their way against Bullard as McLane made off with a 3-0 victory. Given McLane's advantage in MaxPreps' California soccer rankings (they are ranked 84th, while Bullard is ranked 360th), the result wasn't entirely unexpected.
Santa Maria has been performing incredibly well recently as they've won four of their last five contests, which provided a nice bump to their 14-2-8 record this season. As for McLane, the win (which was their fourth in a row) raised their record to 16-5-4.
Article generated by infoSentience based on data entered on MaxPreps
