Sports
Cal Men’s Soccer Announces 15-Game Slate
The California men’s soccer team will play a 15-game regular-season schedule in 2025 highlighted by six matches against teams that reached the 2024 NCAA Championship, six home games and eight ACC matches, head coach Leonard Griffin announced Monday.
Cal’s 2025 opponents UCLA, Duke, Clemson, SMU, Wake Forest and Stanford all competed in the postseason last fall. The Golden Bears are also slated to play five teams that finished ranked last year in SMU (5), Wake Forest (6), Clemson (9), Stanford (13) and Duke (15).
The Golden Bears open the regular season against three programs with Griffin connections. The season opener takes place Aug. 21 at nearby Saint Mary’s in Moraga, where the Bears’ boss was an assistant coach from 2011-13. Cal then faces former Pac-12 rival UCLA – Griffin’s alma mater – on Aug. 24. Griffin won the NCAA championship with the Bruins in 2002 and earned All-America honors as a senior in 2003. Cal hosts its first home game at Edwards Stadium on Aug. 28 against San Francisco, which Griffin led as the Dons’ head coach from 2019 through the spring of 2021.
The Bears begin their second season in the ACC with an early season conference match at Boston College on Sept. 7. Cal’s first home game against an ACC opponent takes place Sept. 14, when Duke visits Edwards Stadium. The Bears had a memorable game with the Blue Devils in the 2024 ACC Championship quarterfinal round, in which Cal upset its second-ranked hosts 2-0 in Durham, North Carolina. Cal next plays Clemson on Sept. 19 in South Carolina. The Tigers were Cal’s opponent in the ACC tournament semifinal, and despite a pair of rallies, the Bears fell 3-2 in Cary, North Carolina.
In their penultimate regular-season home game this fall, the Bears host Wake Forest on Oct. 11. While they did not play the Demon Deacons in their inaugural ACC season last fall, the Bears played then-No. 18 Wake to an impressive 1-1 tie – thanks to a goal by former Bear Kevin Carmichael – in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, early 2023.
The Bears close the regular season in the Big Clasico against Stanford on Halloween in Berkeley. In last year’s Big Clasico on the Farm, Carmichael came up big again when he scored the gamewinner in a 1-0 Cal victory.
Cal then competes in the ACC Championship, which starts on campus sites on Nov. 6 and culminates in the Nov. 19 final in Cary, North Carolina.
The Bears finished 2024 with a flourish, winning three out of four matches on the road to get within perhaps a win or two of reaching the postseason. After the victory at Stanford in the regular-season finale, the Bears upset No. 14 North Carolina 2-1 on the road in its ACC Championship opener, with defender Alfredo Ortiz converting Cal’s first penalty kick of the season to clinch the win. The win at Duke followed and then came the close loss to Clemson, with the Bears finishing the year 8-8-2.
Griffin brings back a bevy of talented Bears for 2025 including sophomore forward Malcolm Zalayet, the team’s top returning goalscorer who netted four goals last year. Zalayet also led Cal in assists with four. Ortiz, another returning sophomore, was the Bears’ fourth-leading scorer last year with seven points from three goals and one assist. Goalkeeper Connor Lambe – who posted a 1.06 goals-against average in 12 games for the Bears in 2023 – is back as a graduate student this fall.
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