Top 50 for 2017-18: Midfielder Gabi Stoian looking to re-emerge as a senior

No. 10: Gabi Stoian

The details: Stoian is a 5-foot-5-inch midfielder from Scottsdale entering her senior season. The UA star came to Arizona after a stellar high school career at Pinnacle, where she tallied 24 goals and nine assists in 26 games as a senior, all helping her win the 2014 Arizona Gatorade Player of the Year award. Stoian visited a handful of schools, including Arizona State, before picking the Wildcats.

“It came down to West Coast schools,” Stoian said. “I visited ASU as well, but U of A just something about it attracted me to it. I loved the coaches, the staff that was here, I loved the players, and the campus … it felt like home. So all these things came together and I fell in love with the team.”

The numbers: Stoian has a number of Arizona career records in her sights, though her production has dipped since a stellar freshman season in 2014. That season, she scored 13 goals, including five game-winners, scored 33 points and had seven assists. As a sophomore, an injury kept her out of four matches, though she still led the team with six goals, eight assists, 20 points and 59 shots. As a junior, Stoian scored six goals with five assists, 17 points and 75 shots. Stoian said her junior season was afflicted with bad luck.

“Oh my gosh, Last season was awful,” Stoian said. “I hit so many crossbars. I think half of them were goals, half of them were crossbars. But it’s all right, it’s just the way the game plays out sometimes. I’ve got to find other ways to get the ball to the back of the net.”

The value: Stoian had one of the best individual seasons in program history as a true freshman, ending with a berth in the NCAA Tournament’s Sweet 16, and helped the UA to another NCAA Tournament a year later. If the Wildcats are going to return after missing the postseason in 2016, it’ll start with Stoian.

“We got to the Sweet 16 my sophomore year and I want to be back there — further, if we can — and make a run for it,” Stoian said. “That’s the standard now — we want to be back in that tournament.”

Why Stoian? Stoian is still the Wildcats’ unquestioned star, and with a little bit of luck her junior season numbers would’ve looked different. There’s no reason to expect Stoian won’t bounce back with a strong senior season.

Proof she’s good: Just look at where she stands on the Arizona career leaderboard — she’s scored 25 career goals, second-most in school history, seven away from the record. She has 20 assists, four off the record, and 70 points, which is 13 off the record. She also has six career game-winning goals, good for fifth place in school history.

“I’m excited to start and I know what records I want to break,” Stoian said, “and I’m going with that mentality.”

What Stoian can accomplish: As a freshman, Stoian made the All-Pac-12 second team. As a sophomore, she made the first team. Last year, it was honorable mention. Expect a return to the first team this season, as well as contention for conference player of the year and All-American honors. Arizona’s last, and only, conference player of the year was Mallory Miller in 2005.

Coachspeak: “The biggest thing is she just has that knack for when a chance comes her way, she knows how to beat a keeper. Some players get 10 chances a game and they only are able to score one. She gets a chance, and you’d bet on it hitting the back of the net. A lot of it comes down to technical ability — both feet, inside and outside of foot, finesse it, power it, chip it — but a lot of it is the instinct.” — UA coach Tony Amato in 2015

She said it: “Yeah, I mean, obviously they (opponents) didn’t know who I was coming in and I wasn’t man-marked, I wasn’t put on scouting reports and then slowly, that’s expected, that happened now and I just need to know how to work around that. … I want to break records, I want to leave my legacy here, and I know I’m capable of doing that.” — Stoian