The Washington men’s soccer team will take the pitch tonight against Cal (8-7-0, 2-5-0) and again Sunday against No. 18 Stanford (9-4-1, 3-3-1) after a bye week. This weekend is critical for a resilient fourth-place Husky team that still has hopes of winning the Pac-10 after a crushing defeat at Oregon State (6-5-2, 2-3-0) on Oct. 17.

The UW will face a Cal team on Friday that is desperate for wins. Cal dropped its last four matches and won only one out of five matches since the Huskies knocked them off in Berkeley.

“They’ve gone on a bad run here, which is very unlike them,” head coach Dean Wurzberger said. “They still have outstanding personnel, probably the top forward in the conference in Andrew Wiedeman. You can never go to sleep against him or underestimate the effort he is going to bring,”

The junior forward will be looking to get on the board against Washington and put an end to Cal’s scoring drought, which has seen the Bears net only two goals in their last five contests.

“They do a nice job of diagonal passing, especially right to left,” Wurzberger said. “They try to create mismatches in the fullback area by hitting long from the right side of the field to the left, so our fullbacks have got to be on their toes.”

The Huskies look to come out and attack early in the game.

“We’ve got to come with an attitude, ‘They need to stop us,’” Wurzberger said. “We are going to defend well, but our attitude is, ‘Hey, we’re going to go for goal.’ We are going to play an attacking game.”

On Sunday, Washington will face a Stanford squad that is coming off a surprising 2-0 victory over No. 2 UCLA. The Cardinal will look to bring that momentum to Seattle. However, Wurzberger sees the Huskies’ defense stepping up to the challenge.

“We are going to have to kill that momentum by playing attacking football, defending their strengths but making them stop us,” Wurzberger said. “Get goals; it’s us taking the game to them.”

Stanford is a team that plays with one forward, as opposed to two. This will mean a shuffle for Washington’s defense.

“They bring numbers from midfield, so we are going to reorganize our midfield a little bit, because they play five in there, and we think we need to adjust accordingly,” Wurzberger said.

What demoralized the Huskies early in the Oregon State match was an early goal from sophomore forward Danny Mwanga, and from there, it was an uphill struggle.

That attitude needs to change this week.

“We need to make sure we shut them down and don’t concede early,” junior midfielder Brad Keller said. “You look at what happened at Oregon State; we conceded 30 seconds into the match. Just make sure we stay solid defensively, and just like the Cal game, the goals will come.”

The two matches this weekend could determine Washington’s fate in a conference stacked with perennial powerhouses, but the Huskies can look to the results on the road against these two teams for confidence.

“If we win these two games,” junior midfielder Matt Van Houten said, “I think we will have a good chance of winning the Pac-10.”

Reach reporter Mark Morgan at sports@dailyuw.com.