Thirty-five seconds later, Zach Ryan flicked a ball on frame with the outside of his right foot from nearly 25 yards that hit off a USF defender, found its way through a crowd and into the back of goal. It was the redshirt sophomore’s team-leading fifth score of the season.

“I was really, really happy with the first half and how we passed and moved the ball,” Stanford coach Jeremy Gunn said. “I thought we were crisp and we were tough to play against. We were moving the ball and creating chances and that’s what we’d been working on. It was fluid and purposeful and we scored a couple of goals from it.”

Stanford (10-1-2) scored twice in less than a minute midway through the first half to improve to 10-1-1 in its last 12 games against the Dons (2-9-1).

Stanford will focus on the remainder of conference play, with five Pac-12 matches left to close out the regular season. The Cardinal is on 10 points (3-1-1), five shy of Washington (5-0-0), which heads to UCLA and San Diego State this weekend.

“There are always going to be chances and there are always going to be goals,” Gunn said of the defense. “But today, the good defending in the first half came from playing great soccer. In the second half we had to do a bit more defending, but still weren’t really opened up that much.”

The shutout was the third in a row for Stanford following a three-game stretch in which it surrendered six combined goals to UC Santa Barbara, Washington and Oregon State. The Cardinal now has eight clean sheets on the year.

The Cardinal took 20 shots, put six on target and had a number of chances to put the game out of reach in the second half, including a Hughes header that pounded the crossbar off another Waldeck corner in the 89th minute.

“That’s how it can go,” Gunn added of Ryan’s goal. “Other days you’ll have five chances and score four goals. That’s soccer and that’s why it’s such an unpredictable game and why it’s so exciting.”

The last time Stanford had both teams in the top three was Week Three rankings of the 2006 season when the women were ranked No. 1 and the men No. 3. The Stanford women, led by Arianna Lambie, won the second of three consecutive NCAA titles that year and the men, paced by Neftalem Araia's runner-up finish, took fourth.

Each team moved up two spots after their runner-up finishes at the prestigious Nuttycombe Wisconsin Invitational on Saturday. The Cardinal women are No. 2 and the men are tied for No. 3.

For the first time in 13 years, both Stanford's men's and women's cross country teams are ranked among the top 3 in the country by the U.S. Track and Field and Cross Country Collegiate Coaches Association.

“We’ve gone through this part of the season and we’ve put ourselves in a tremendous spot,” Gunn commented. “We get another week to prepare for the big push of five conference games and we’ll regroup from this one and continue to sharpen the tools. It is the second half of conference, but really we just get to focus on the game next Thursday night against San Diego State.”

The NCAA Championships are Nov. 23 in Terre Haute, Indiana. Stanford has placed both teams in the top five at nationals the past three years.

In addition to the national rankings, the regional rankings were released and Stanford moved up to No. 1 in the West among both the men and the women.

Stanford men crisp in return to soccer action