Carolina Seeks 23rd Women's Soccer National Championship Sunday

TAR HEELS MEET CARDINAL SUNDAY FOR NCAA CHAMPIONSHIP: After defeating Washington State Friday night in the NCAA Tournament semifinal round, the North Carolina women's soccer program has earned the right to play for the 2019 NCAA championship for the 26th time in school history. Carolina is 21-4 in its previous 25 NCAA championship game appearances.
UNC has won 21 NCAA championships and it also won the 1981 AIAW championship in the year before the NCAA began championships in women's soccer.
The Tar Heels, 24-1-1 on the season and the Atlantic Coast Conference regular season and tournament champions, will play the #1-ranked Stanford Cardinal Sunday at 5:30 p.m. PST (8:30 p.m. EST) in the NCAA Tournament championship game at Avaya Stadium in San Jose, Calif. The Cardinal is 23-1 on the season and they advanced to the championship match after overwhelming seventh-ranked UCLA 4-1 in Friday night's second semifinal game.
The national championship game will be televised live on ESPU. Jenn Hildreth will be the play-by-play announcer and Julie Foudy will be the analyst for Sunday's championship match.

#1 VS. #2: The championship match features a matchup of the top two-ranked teams in the country. Stanford is ranked No. 1 by United Soccer Coaches, No. 1 by Soccer America and No. 1 in the NCAA RPI. North Carolina is ranked No. 2 by United Soccer Coaches, No. 2 by Soccer America and No. 2 by the NCAA RPI.

SO FAR IN THE NCAA TOURNAMENT IN 2019: The Tar Heels are the #1 seeds in the lower round quadrant of the 64-team NCAA Tournament bracket.
UNC has advanced to the NCAA championship with wins over Belmont 5-0, Colorado 1-0, Michigan 4-0, Southern California 3-2 and Washington State 2-1.

UNC VS. THE PAC-12 THIS YEAR: The game against Stanford Sunday will mark Carolina's fifth game against a Pac-12 opponent in 2019 and the fourth meeting with a Pac-12 foe in the NCAA Tournament.
UNC defeated Washington 3-2 in Seattle on August 29. In the NCAA Tournament, UNC beat Colorado 1-0 in the second round, Southern California 3-2 in the quarterfinals and Washington State 2-1 in the semifinals.
In its history, Carolina is 50-4-6 against teams from the Pac-12 Conference.
UNC is 9-2-3 all-time against Stanford. Four successive games in the series have been decided in overtime and five of the past six games in the series have gone to overtime.
Stanford has a two-game winning streak in the series, beating UNC in Chapel Hill 1-0 in 2014 and downing the Tar Heels 2-1 in Stanford in 2018, both in regular-season games.
In the last NCAA Tournament meeting, UNC upset top-ranked Stanford 1-0 in double overtime in the 2012 semifinals in San Diego, Calif.

CAROLINA IN THE NCAA TOURNAMENT: Carolina is the only school in the country that has played in all 38 NCAA Tournaments. In those 38 tournaments, UNC has an all-time record of 136-14-4. That is an amazing winning percentage of 89.5 percent. Carolina has won 21 NCAA Tournaments, finished second four times and placed third on three occasions.
Friday's game versus Washington State marked the 29th NCAA semifinal appearance for North Carolina all-time. UNC is 26-3 all-time in NCAA Tournament semifinal games, including a 1-0 double overtime victory over Georgetown in the NCAA semifinals in Cary, N.C. last season and a 2-1 victory over Washington State Friday night.
Carolina has advanced to the NCAA championship game a total of 26 times and it has a 21-4 record in NCAA title games.
After the win over USC in the 2019 quarterfinals, UNC is a rather astounding 28-1-2 all-time in NCAA quarterfinal matches. It's only loss in a quarterfinal match came against UCLA in 2013 by a 1-0 score in double overtime at Fetzer Field in Chapel Hill. The only other time UNC failed to get through a quarterfinal game was 2005 when the Tar Heels fell to Florida State 5-4 on penalty kicks after a 1-1 tie against the Seminoles at Fetzer Field. Last year, UNC and UCLA played to a 2-2 double overtime result in the quarterfinals before the Tar Heels prevailed 4-2 on penalty kicks to advance to the NCAA semifinals.

FRIDAY'S SEMIFINAL WIN: Friday's 2-1 semifinal win over Washington State marked the fifth time UNC has come-from-behind to win a game.
UNC also rallied from behind to beat Washington, Pittsburgh, Miami and Southern California. The only game in which UNC trailed and did not come back to win was a 2-0 loss at Arkansas on September 15.
After conceding in the seventh minute against the Cougars Carolina rallied to win on Alessia Russo's 13^th goal of the season in the 24^th minute and Alexis Strickland's fourth goal of the campaign in the 38^th minute. Claudia Dickey made three key second-half saves to preserve the lead for Carolina.
For only the second time this season, UNC was outshot and conceded more corner kicks. Washington State outshot the Tar Heels 10-8 and had a 7-2 edge in corner kicks. Florida State had outshot the Tar Heels on October 24 and Virginia Tech had more corner kicks on October 27. Both of those games resulted in 2-0 UNC wins.
The eight shots by UNC were the fewest since it took eight shots in the 2018 NCAA championship game versus Florida State.

CAROLINA'S 24-WIN SEASON: North Carolina won its 24th game of the 2019 season when it defeated Washington State Friday. That is the most wins in a season for a UNC team since the 2008 squad finished 25-1-2, winning a national championship over Notre Dame.

CONSISTENCY, STATISTICAL ANOMALY OR JUST VERY GOOD?: Head Coach Anson Dorrance is currently in his 41st season as the Tar Heels' head mentor. His teams have an all-time record of 871-75-41 (.903). Under Anson Dorrance, UNC has won 22 national championships, including 21 NCAA crowns and one AIAW title in his 40 previous years as head coach. UNC has won 22 outright regular-season ACC titles and shared another conference regular-season crown (2014) while capturing 22 ACC Tournament championships in his 41 years as head coach with ACC regular season play beginning in 1987 and the ACC Tournament in 1988. During his tenure, Dorrance's teams are 218-26-12 in ACC regular-season games, 69-6-5 in ACC Tournament matches and 136-14-4 in NCAA Tournament games. UNC is 380-28-16 in home games in its history and 491-47-25 in games played on the road and at neutral sites. Under Dorrance, UNC has won 90.3 percent of its games overall, 87.5 percent of its ACC regular-season games, 89.4 percent of its ACC Tournament games, 89.5 percent of its NCAA Tournament games, 91.5 percent of its home games and 89.4 percent of its road and neutral site games. UNC has played 562 of its 987 all-time games either on the road or at neutral sites (57.0 percent) so Carolina's record all-time is hardly based on home cooking. In the program's 41-year history, totaling 987 games, Carolina has shut out opponents 615 times and has been held scoreless in just 58 games. UNC has shutout its opponents in 62.4 of its all-time games.

JUST FIVE TIMES SINCE 1986: Carolina's 2-0 setback at Arkansas on September 15, 2019 marked only the fifth loss for the Tar Heels by a margin of more than one goal since the 1985 season, a campaign which ended with a 2-0 loss to George Mason in the NCAA Tournament final.
Carolina has played 837 games since the start of the 1986 season, losing by more than one goal just five times. That streak traces back to the opening game of the 1986 season against George Mason, a 3-3 tie.
After losing to George Mason 2-0 in the 1985 NCAA Tournament championship game, the Tar Heels went 25 years without losing a game by more than one goal before that streak ended in 2010.
Since 1986, UNC has only lost five games by more than one goal. Two of those four losses have come against Virginia. The Tar Heels fell to Notre Dame 4-1 on November 20, 2010, lost to Virginia 2-0 on October 20, 2013, was upended by Virginia 2-0 on November 7, 2014, lost to USC 3-0 on September 11, 2016 and fell to Arkansas 2-0 on September 15, 2019.

DID YOU KNOW...: North Carolina would have to lose its next 796 games in a row for head coach Anson Dorrance to have a .500 coaching winning percentage in his career at the helm of the Tar Heels.
UNC enters Sunday with an all-time record of 871-75-41. Dorrance has coached the Tar Heels in all 986 of their games all-time.

SHUTOUTS ARE INFREQUENT: UNC's 0-0 tie against Duke on October 10, 2019 was only the 58th time the Tar Heels have been shut out in their history. Altogether, UNC has played 986 matches since 1979.
The Tar Heels have been blanked on the scoreboard in only 5.9 percent of the games they have played in during their history. Carolina has suffered 43 shutout losses in its history. The Tar Heels have also played 15 scoreless ties in their history.
Only five times in UNC history have the Tar Heels been shutout in back-to-back games in the same season.
That happened against Portland and Florida in 2012, against Notre Dame and Florida State in 2013, against UCLA and Pepperdine in 2014, against Florida State and Duke in 2015 and against USC and NC State in 2016.

Carolina Seeks 23rd Women's Soccer National Championship Sunday

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Players Mentioned

Claudia Dickey

Alessia Russo

Alexis Strickland

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