There’s no question that the No. 1 Stanford women’s soccer team is looking forward to playing in the College Cup this weekend. But more than likely, the Cardinal is looking backward as well.

 

Three straight trips to college soccer’s Final Four have ended in 1-0 losses for Stanford (23-0-1), and things probably aren’t going to get any easier this time around with all four top seeds still alive in Kennesaw, Ga. this weekend.

 

If the Cardinal wants to make it to a third-straight College Cup final, it’s going to have to fend off a Florida State team (18-6-1) this afternoon that’s much more dangerous than its record might suggest. The ACC champion Seminoles lost twice in four days to the two other College Cup squads, Duke (21-3-1) and Wake Forest (18-3-4), before falling to conference second and third-place finishers North Carolina and Virginia in a two-week span. Needless to say, the tough schedule prepared Florida State for the tournament well, as the Seminoles have outscored opponents 10-1 while avenging regular-season losses to Portland and Virginia.

 

Stanford has been challenged significantly in the postseason in its own right, and is coming off a nail-biting 2-1 win over Oklahoma State that senior forward Lindsay Taylor ended with a point-blank goal early in overtime. Emotional as the victory may have been, the Cardinal isn’t ready to rest on its laurels.

 

“It will definitely give us confidence going into the College Cup to be able to come back from being tied and go into overtime,” Taylor said, “but saying that, I think that going into every game we have to bring everything we have and play the style of soccer we’re capable of playing. So I don’t think that any game necessarily helps us get over a hump.”

 

That certainly hasn’t been the case for Stanford over the last two College Cups, when dramatic wins in the semifinals preceded letdown performances on Sunday. So even with the trying battle against the Cowgirls behind it, the Cardinal knows it has to get right back to work.

 

“In the whole tournament, I don’t think any game’s been easy so far,” said senior midfielder Kristy Zurmuhlen, who opened the scoring for the Cardinal last Friday. “I mean, there’s [been rainy] weather and every team’s athletic and tough. I think it’s just prepared us going forward.”

 

Indeed, Stanford hasn’t really dominated any of its tournament games from the opening kickoff, scoring more than half of its postseason goals after the 60th minute.

 

“We’re going to be very excited to get to the College Cup now because we had to earn it, it wasn’t just gliding in there easy,” said head coach Paul Ratcliffe. “We know it’s going to be hard once we get there, and we’ve had tests going into this, so I think that’s going to help us.

 

“It’s going to take experience, but for me the most important thing is that competitive drive and that character and the desire. You’ve got to have that to win it.”

 

Friday’s matchup will feature a showdown between two dominant forwards: Taylor for the Cardinal and redshirt junior forward Tiffany McCarty, whose 18 goals on the season are second in the ACC, for the Seminoles. Each has carried her successes to the postseason, where Taylor has posted seven points and McCarty has netted five.

 

Taylor certainly had more of an impact when these two teams met last year in the quarterfinals, getting Stanford’s second score in a 5-0 rout and taking five shots, all of them on goal. McCarty missed the entire 2010 season due to injury.

 

It will be the last chance at a national championship for Taylor, Zurmuhlen and the rest of the seniors.

 

“The people on this team are like sisters, and we just care about each other so much,” Zurmuhlen said. “And as much as we want this for ourselves, we want it more for each other, and I think that’s the difference: We work for each other.”

 

Should the Cardinal advance, it will have less than two days to prepare for either Wake Forest or Duke, who meet in the late game Friday. As dominant as Stanford has been in recent years, the squad has gone only 18-14-7 against ACC schools in its history; many of those struggles came against North Carolina, however, which has an 8-0-3 record in the series. Luckily for the Card, the Tar Heels fell in penalty kicks in the third round.

 

Stanford meets Florida State at 2 p.m., with the NCAA Final scheduled for Sunday at 10 a.m. Both games will be televised on ESPNU and at ESPN3.com.