The comforts of home will be absent for the Stanford men’s soccer team this weekend as the squad leaves the Bay Area for the first time this season. The Cardinal (4-2-4, 1-0-1 Pacific-10) hits the road to take on UCLA today and San Diego State on Sunday.

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Wendy Kalkus

The Cardinal will take to the road for the first time this season as Stanford faces a pair of key matchups in Southern California this weekend. First up are the 4-5 Bruins tonight, while Sunday the Card faces the offensively balanced Aztecs.

Coach Bret Simon expects the away matches against tough opponents to present new tests for his team.

“The games on the road will add another element for us,” Simon said. “We’re excited to travel together for our first long road trip. Both UCLA and San Diego State are excellent teams with strong individual players. So this will be an exciting challenge for us.”

Senior defender Scott Bolkan agrees that the road games will lend a change of pace after Stanford’s near month-long homestead.

“It’s always tough to play on the road,” Bolkan said. “With some things, there’s no real way to prepare — the crowd’s harsher, the turf is different, and since only 20 players can travel, we miss the support of all our teammates on the sideline. At the same time, playing on the road gives us a break from the academic and social environment at school and we can focus on playing soccer.”

The first stop for the Cardinal is at 7 p.m. tonight in Los Angeles where the Bruins (4-5-1, 0-1-0 Pac-10) await Stanford armed with leading scorer Maxwell Griffin, who has notched four goals so far this season.

Whereas UCLA is coming off a 1-0 loss to San Diego State on Oct. 6, the Cardinal has been undefeated in its last five matches (3-0-2); Bolkan hopes that the lessons from this positive streak will give Stanford the necessary confidence and momentum to be successful in the future.

“This past weekend was definitely a big building block for us as we get into our Pac-10 campaign,” Bolkan said. “Against [Oregon State University] we saw how we could score goals and finish a team off strong, and against Washington our defense performed very well and shut out one of the nation’s best attacking teams.”

The Cardinal met the Bruins twice last year, with both matchups ending in 1-1 double-overtime ties. But those results will have little bearing on the competition tonight. Stanford plans to focus on Griffin and fellow offensive threats, such as senior Mike Zaher, who has scored two goals, without losing sight of its own style of play.

“There are certainly some clever and dangerous players we have to be aware of when facing these teams,” Bolkan said. “UCLA in particular has a lot of skillful players that we want to be prepared for. But it’s nothing that will radically change the way we play as a team. I think we are very confident in our ability to beat any team we play, and we don’t need to change our strategy to accommodate for another team or single player.”

From L.A., the Cardinal will move on to SDSU (5-2-2, 1-0-0 Pac-10) for a 2 p.m. match on Sunday. Offensively, the Aztecs are led by redshirt sophomore Jamel Wallace, who has three goals this year. Wallace is closely trailed by Kraig Chiles, Nick Cardenas, and Khadim Diouf, each of whom has contributed two goals on the year.

Bolkan said that the Stanford defense has been preparing to face the Aztecs’ deep offensive lineup throughout the week.

“When we look at teams like [this], we tend to focus on their offensive threats,” he said. “Unless, of course, a goalie has some sort of tendencies we think we can exploit.”

In the case of the Aztecs, that is unlikely. Sunday’s greatest threat will probably be redshirt freshman goalie Brad Byrns, who has already posted five shutouts and 29 saves this year. He tops Stanford’s own senior Andrew Kartunen in both categories.

Regardless, the key to a win for Stanford in both games will come from the front: goal scoring, plain and simple. While the Cardinal has struggled with this throughout the season, the OSU game offered a glimmer of hope for what could be, especially in the first half when Stanford racked up eight shots for one goal, going on to win 4-0.

The only question that remains is whether Stanford can sustain its improvement after taking to the road.