SANTA BARBARA, Calif. - The Cleveland State women's soccer team dropped its season opener, 3-0, at UC Santa Barbara on Friday night at Harder Stadium.

"Overall, I thought we needed to perform at higher level than we showed on the field today and the players understand this," head coach Sonia Curvelo said. "We will work to get better tomorrow and continue to focus on little details that will help us improve our game.

"We absorbed a lot of pressure and in the first half, I thought we did well to stay compact when we defended and not allow them any dangerous scoring opportunities. We needed to do much better in our attacking transition and keeping the ball.

"Close to the end of the second half, Kelcey (Fischer) played a great ball through to Allie (Sieradzki) to put her in a breakaway situation. It's important that was created, however, we need to finish those chances."

The teams played a scoreless first half before UCSB was able to put three goals on the board in the second half.

The first tally came 12 minutes into the half when Amanda Ball took a pass from Savannah Francis on the right side of the box and scored to the far post. The Gauchos made it 2-0 in the 68th minute on Indiana Mead's free kick from just outside of the box on the right side.

The final goal came with just under seven minutes to play when Brittney McKinney headed in a cross from Zoe Purcell.

Sarah Wood made five saves for CSU, facing 14 shots on the night.

The Vikings had four shots with Vickie Havas and Sieradzki recording shots on goal.

CSU concludes its west coast trip on Sunday when the Vikings play at Loyola Marymount at 4:00 p.m. EST.