With its regular season winding down, Arizona soccer (9-5-2, 3-4-1) begins a two-game road trip this weekend when it takes on Utah and Colorado. Going into this weekend’s matchups, the Wildcats are currently No. 23 in the NCAA Women’s Soccer RPI rankings.

Last weekend, the Wildcats closed out this season’s scheduled home games at Murphey Field at Mulcahy Soccer Stadium with a loss and a tie to Stanford and California, respectively. Both of last week’s games went into overtime, but, unfortunately for Arizona, it was only able to muster a single point in the process. Overall, Arizona was a solid 6-2-1 in the friendly confines of Murphey Field this season.

Senior midfielder Julia Glanz said she thinks the Wildcats will have success this weekend if they can reconstruct their previous second-half efforts.

“I think if we play the way we did in the second half of the Cal and Stanford games, we should be good,” Glanz said. “Against Colorado and Utah, we have to come out strong and get these two road wins.”

On Friday at noon, Arizona battles the Utah Utes, who have had limited success this season, especially in conference play. Going into Friday’s game, Utah has just a single win in conference play, but, despite being second to last in the conference standings, has played some close games, including losing only 1-0 to No. 1 UCLA and managing a draw against No. 4 Stanford. Late last season, Utah came into Tucson and scored a goal in the second overtime to defeat the Wildcats 1-0.

So far in 2014, Utah has been a middle of the road team in terms of goals scored and goals allowed in the Pac-12 Conference, but it does have two players in the top-10 of assists in the conference, with Katie Taylor and Avery Jenkins combining for 12 on the season. Redshirt junior goalkeeper Lindsey Luke is second in the Pac-12 in saves with 83 and has shutout Ute opponents seven times.

The game will be televised on the Pac-12 Networks.

Sunday’s game also kicks off at noon and sees Arizona face off with Colorado, a team currently tied with the Wildcats in the Pac-12 standings for seventh place. The Buffaloes are coming off a similar weekend to the Wildcats when they were defeated by 

Washington State before managing a tie with Washington. Despite Colorado making the Sweet Sixteen last season, the Wildcats defeated the Buffaloes 3-0 at home.

Sophomore forward Brie Hooks leads the team in goals with six and is tied for second in assists with four.

Arizona head coach Tony Amato knows the difficulty of this weekend’s competition, especially considering how close the postseason is.

“It’s going to be a challenge,” Amato said. “All the teams competing this weekend, including us, are trying to make the NCAA Tournament, obviously. It’s going to be a challenge against good opponents, and we’ve got to do what we’ve been doing all year in order for us to put ourselves in a position to win.”

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