The top-two seeds in the NWSL will square off at Providence Park when the San Diego Wave visits the Portland Thorns on Saturday night. San Diego sits in second place with 30 points, two points behind the league-leading Portland, the defending champion.

The Wave come into the game after suffering a 2-1 home loss to the Kansas City Current on Sept. 16, which snapped a three-game winning streak while Portland comes in having defeated OL Reign 2-0 at home.

“We’ve got to be more clinical in certain moments,” said San Diego Wave head coach Casey Stoney. “We were too passive, we were too spread out and distances were too big. We just didn’t get any pressure on the ball.”

Portland has the league’s best offense with 40 goals thanks largely to the efforts of forward Sophia Smith who is the NWSL top-scorer with 11, and teammate Morgan Weaver with 7. The two sides settled for a draw in their previous regular season meeting on May 26 at Snapdragon Stadium with goals from forward Sofia Jakobsson in the 86th minute and the tying goal by defender Reyna Reyes in the 90th minute.

“We can’t always look in the past, we have to look at the present,” said Weaver. “Obviously, we will look at game film and things we need to work on. I feel that every game we’ve gotten better and we’ve learned from our mistakes.”

San Diego Wave will have two more matches after Saturday against the North Carolina Courage and then home to close out the regular season against Racing Louisville. If the Wave can finish as either the first or second seed then it will get a bye in the quarterfinal round with a guaranteed home game in the semifinal round of the playoffs.

Photo courtesy: David Frerker