photo courtesy of StanfordPhoto.com

By FRANCO PANIZO

The bar is as high as ever for Stanford after an impressive and encouraging 2014 season, but is not content with just leaving it there. The Cardinal wants to raise it further as the challenging journey for national prominence continues.

By most accounts, Stanford’s 2014 season was another step in the right direction. The Pac-12 team won its conference for the first time since 2001 and just second time overall, recorded its most wins since 2002 with by going 13-3-3, scored 34 goals, and made it back to the NCAA tournament for the second straight year.

Unfortunately for the Cardinal, there was no fairytale ending. Far from it, in fact. The team was upset in its first game in tournament play, suffering a heartbreaking 1-0 overtime loss to UC Irvine. The promise and hope that the year had brought vanished just like that.

While the disappointment of seeing last season come to such an abrupt end is still somewhat palpable in Stanford’s returning players, much of the focus now lies on adding to 2014’s success and laying another building block in the program’s attempt to become one of the country’s elite.

“Really I planned to build a nationally prominent program, and I think we’re ahead of the curve right now,” fourth-year Stanford head coach Jeremy Gunn told SBI. “Last year we performed wonderfully, we got a lot of great results, and as a result we were sitting very, very high, finishing the regular season having had a fantastic year.

“Obviously it’s disappointing whenever you lose your last game. You always want to keep playing as long as possible, but at the same time the year in itself was a wonderful marquee year for the program and something we can build off as we move forward.”

Boasting talented players like senior defender Brandon Vincent and U.S. Men’s National Team and junior forward Jordan Morris, there is plenty of reason for optimism and excitement for Stanford heading into 2015. The core of last year’s success is still mostly in tact, even if five key seniors have now departed.

Zach Batteer, Matt Taylor, Bobby Edwards, Austin Meyer, and Jimmy Callinan all finished their time as Cardinal players last year, and the voids they have left behind need to be filled in some way, shape or fashion in order for Stanford to have a chance of accomplishing bigger things this year.

Gunn, however, does not plan on “replacing” them. He does not believe in that term, and instead tackles the natural evolution of a college team by just moving on with a new player in a different way. That means, for example, that the player that takes Batteer’s forward spot may play differently or that whoever comes in for Meyer in the midfield could be tasked with providing other skills.

There might be changes in the personnel and tweaks to the style of play, but all this is not to say that Stanford plans to get away from the blue-collared nature that has paved the way for its recent accomplishments.

“I think the foundations of the program are still going to be there,” said Gunn. “I think we’re going to be a very hardworking, honest team that’s always going to compete and give themselves a chance to be in the game. Hopefully we’re continuing to develop as a playing team, and we’ll continue to grow with how we play the game.

“We had a very exciting spring as well where we played some lovely soccer and to be honest we’re not quite at that level yet, but we’ll be getting there through the next few weeks and hopefully it should be another exciting, attacking brand of soccer.”

One player who very well could dictate how successful the Cardinal is is Morris, the 20-year-old forward with a blazing set of wheels and unmatched international experience. Morris has been called up to and capped by the U.S. Men’s National Team several times over the past year, and he’s already scored his first international goal, against arch-rival Mexico no less.

Morris is coming off a summer operation on his leg, but will need to kick things into a higher gear from the start of 2015 in order for it to be another positive season for Stanford. His production as a goal-scorer dropped last year, netting just four times compared to six in his freshman campaign. Morris’ assist total also dipped from seven to six, but he still led the team in that category.

Part of the reason for his reduced numbers is simply because he was not with the Cardinal as much in 2014 as he was the year prior. With U.S. Men’s National Teams summoning Morris on a few occasions during the college season, the promising youngster missed a handful of games. Morris finished the last college campaign by starting each of the 15 games he appeared in, but in 2013 he appeared in 21 and got the nod in 19 of those.

Still, Morris knows that more will be expected of him now.

“You can never really have excuses,” Morris told SBI. “I think that it was tough coming in and out (of being at Stanford) a little bit, but a lot of that was on me. I had a lot of chances to score and just didn’t put them away. I think I’ve worked on that a bunch since I’ve gotten back and throughout the winter and spring I worked a bunch on my finishing because that’s a very important part of my game.

“I think anyone can say, ‘He wasn’t here then, he wasn’t here then,’ and that was tough, but I think it just comes down to me becoming a better finisher. It’s a lot of what I’ve worked on, so I’m excited to see if I can go out there and score some more goals this year.”

Stanford could certainly use it. While the Pac-12 champions did not struggle to score last year, it was Vincent, a centerback, who led the team in goals with six. Three players were tied for second with five goals apiece, and then Morris and returning midfielder Corey Baird followed with four tallies each.

Gunn is not necessarily opposed to seeing a change there, but he also does not have a problem with nor is he concerned about the way his Cardinal side found the back of the net 34 times last year.

“I think it’s always great if a striker is scoring goals, I think that’s important,” said Gunn. “But I think if you look at the way our team played and you count how many different goal-scorers we had from different positions – I think we scored a goal from every position on the field apart from goalkeeper – I think that’s exciting.

“I think it shows how versatile the players are, and also it means that you can’t just key in on stopping one component. Sometimes it’s a little bit easier to scout a team when you know you have to shut down just one or two players.”

It might be a plus to have scoring threats all over the field, but having a more reliable finisher up front could also come in handy, especially when playing in the NCAA tournament. Defenses tend to get tighter and tougher there, a lesson Stanford learned all too well last year.

In that shutout defeat to UC Irvine, Stanford had moments where it played really well and created scoring chances. The Cardinals’ failure to finish ultimately proved costly, however.

“It was frustrating to have such a great regular season and then obviously didn’t do as well in the tournament,” said Morris. “We do think about it, we do use that as motivation, we obviously want to get farther and play as many games as we can, but you also have to put that in the rearview mirror.

“We thought about it, but now it’s behind us. We use it as motivation, and it’s a whole new year so you’ve go to move on and we’re ready to take it as far as we can.”

That is, after all, what Stanford is gunning for in order to raise the standard and move closer to being one of the top programs in the nation.

“A couple of years ago our expectations weren’t as high, but we were very, very willing and we knew we had to change and adapt,” said Gunn. “Today, the expectations have gotten much higher and our challenge is to make sure everybody is still willing to put the work in for the team, do the right things, and not get ahead of themselves.”