Greatest penalty shootout comeback ever. Down 2-0 after two full penalty rounds.Everything after that, went Penn State's way.
Michigan chokes, actually. Unbelievable. Oh well, at least SDSU is out today. Looking forward to next weekend!
Well, that's that! Michigan not up to the task--no one but themselves to blame. PSU is not the most frightening #1 seed...
And now this sets up the epic Quarterfinal round. Defending National Champion (Stanford) Last year's runner-up (Duke) 2010 National Champion (Notre Dame) 2008 and 2009 National Champion (North Carolina) Team that was #1 for much of this year (Florida State) Team that was also #1 for part of this year (UCLA) Maya Hayes, Christine Nairn, and crew (Penn State) Mormon girls, in trying to create "controversy" in the College Cup (BYU) Does it get anymore compelling, among the eight teams left?
Yep, Costa with her ear muffies turned it around. Those muffs must have drowned out the constant coaching PSU received from the stands.
I don't mind a PK shootout as long as I don't care about either team. In this one, victory and defeat were snatched from each other's jaws.
Of the 8 teams left. 3 West teams (Stanford, UCLA, BYU) 2 Midwest teams (Notre Dame, and Penn State from a Midwestern conference that is) 3 South teams (North Carolina, Duke, Florida State) Regionally, the bases are covered (you can count Penn State as an eastern team as well).
I'm a sad Aztec townie, but I didn't really expect to get any further. I find it hard to get behind any of the teams, but at his point, I've kind of enjoyed BYU, and last year, I really liked duke. Either of those teams is fine by me. Kinda same sitch when I went to the men's college cup in '10. Settled on Akron just due to NE Ohio family ties. Turns out they got good! The men's cup had some t-shirts for each of the four schools. I wonder if the women's is as good, swagwise?
By where the schools are located, maybe. But Penn State plays most of its games in the midwest (I call it Middle) regional playing pool and Notre Dame plays in the northeast (I call it Northeast) pool. So, 3 teams from the West pool, 3 from the Southeast pool, 1 from the Northeast pool, 1 from the Middle pool, and none from the Southwest pool. What is the order of regional pool strength by average ARPI in 2012? Here it is: 1. West 0.5208 2. Southeast 0.5122 3. Northeast 0.4879 4. Middle 0.4856 5. Southwest 0.4799 So, the quarterfinals are a good reflection of regional strength.
I can honestly say I dont feel good about any of the four games. Stanford (arguably the best) against UCLA (prolly the hottest) Penn St against Duke has to be a pick'em Notre Dame loved being the underdog and Fla St may have peaked halfway thru the season Carolina u never know which team will show up. Course they will have the Ohai family in the stands.
I think if you had watched the FSU/Texas game you might feel different about FSU. Today was one of the best games in a long time. Many of the Texas fans said that FSU will win it all. FSU totally dominated the game against a very good team.
Yeah, I hear that. I pretty much go match to match. I've actually liked BYU from way back. Back in the day, when FSC changed channels on DTV, I continued to turn to the old channel, 612(which became some college sports network at the time), forgetting that FSC was on a different channel. Anyway, every time I tuned to that channel, it seemed as if a BYU match was on--no joke! I guess that I'm a silent supporter of the team for that reason; I have no connection to BYU, whatsoever! LOL
I don't either, nor am I Mormon (not that there's anything wrong with it). But my cable does get BYUtv now, and iTunes has BYU Radio. Never knew that all existed before the tourney. Intriguing.
Funny how having regular games on TV helps you like and follow particular teams. I'm lucky to get BYU TV and the Pac 12 network so I can regularly see those games. Though seemed like BYU TV showed more pre-season games than regular season games. Awesome that they are showing these NCAA tournament games. What about the Big 10 network? Are they televising any? I don't have any kind of connection with any teams left in the tournament but I have my favorites anyway.
By far this was the worst round for the Elo-ish rating systems since I've been doing this for the last few years. The favored teams only scored 3.5 points out of 8, when 6 to 6.5 points was predicted. In the GoCourage Prediction Contest, the system didn't appear to do as badly as all three favored teams that went to PKs won the shootout. I varied the conversion formula this year from Massey to an Albyn Jones scale, simplifying it slightly, but I doubt that has that much effect on the predicted results (although it may affect more noticeably the percentage deviation between expected and actual win percentages). I doubt it could affect more than a couple game results. It could only affect games where homefield advantage could potentially give a lower-rated team the edge in a game. Otherwise the higher-rated team is going to be predicted as "winning" for our purposes - The conversion to an Albyn Jones scale doesn't change which teams are rated higher and which teams are rated lower; it only changes the measure difference between the teams. So the expected win percentage will change, either being greater or lower, but not who's favored and who's the underdog (except where homefield can tilt the scales). In short, I think so far there's been a few more upsets than usual. With 56 out of the 63 games having now been played, that's not going to change for the tournament as a whole. Expected win percentages for the Quarterfinals: favored teamratingopponentopp. ratingexpected win pct. BYU 1985 North Carolina 1925 0.697 Penn St 1950 Duke 1885 0.704 Stanford 2055 UCLA 1920 0.794 Florida St 1995 Notre Dame 1745 0.896
Finally, a voice of reason. I wish a moderator would step in here because I'm finding the BYU bashing to be beyond disturbing. Showing a little gamesmanship shouldn't cause the viciousness I'm seeing on this board. I had to stop allowing my daughters to read anything on this website because of the extreme inappropriateness of commenting on body types of u-20 players. Absolutely reprehensible commenting. It would be nice if people limited their posts to actual comments about soccer and kept extreme personal criticisms to themselves. Ask yourselves how you would like people to comment about your own daughter.