Week 11 results (10/29-11-4)

Two rare Monday night games, one not so big, and the other one of the bigger regular season games of the year.

Earlier, NC State beat VMI 3-2. Alex Martinez with a goal and an assist.

Washington and UCLA kicked off a few minutes ago and the Bruins have taken an early lead on a goal by Ryan Hollingshead.

UCLA-U-dub still 1-0 at HT.

hurricane sandy will push a few games back, the Hartwick v Buffalo game has been moved to Wednesday.

UCLA 1 UW 0 FT

UCLA with a early goal by Hollingshead beats UDub 1-0.

UCLA makes the loan goal hold up.

The top of the Pac-12 standings look like this:

Washington (11-4-3) - 6-1-2
UCLA (11-2-2) - (6-1-0)
UCLA has home games left with Stanford, Cal and San Diego State. Washington closes out @Oregon State.

The Bruins have held up well this year in the face of quite a few injuries. Looking at tonight's box, they were without arguably their two best ballhandlers, Victor Munoz and Evan Raynr. For their sake, I hope those two are back to full strength in time for the NCAAs.

Also interesting that freshman Javan Torre has been plugged into the starting line-up. He must've shown really well on his U-20 trip.

Why would that influence playing time at UCLA? If Player A and Player B are competing for a spot and Player A consistently outplays Player B, why would Player B all of a sudden start getting more time because he did well playing for an entirely different team? Not disputing that he's playing more, just seems an odd reason.

In Torre's case, the key may have been playing time. At UCLA, he was far enough down the depth chart that he wasn't off the bench at all. The U20s gave him some starts, and then Salcedo gave him a start in his first game back. I'm thinking that's not a coincidence, although you're right that there could be other reasons.

Maybe Salcedo has been watching UDub and fallen in love with the long throw-in. Torre's got a good one.

I do no want to face UW in the NCAA tournament because of the long throw ins. Can't believe I just said that.

Elon and Duke play to a 0-0 tie. This is actually a disappointing result for Elon (12-4-2), which came into the game with an RPI of 23 while Duke's was 62.

That said, Duke (7-7-2) needed this result to crawl over .500 and salvage a shot at getting enough wins down the stretch and in the ACC Tourney to resuscitate their at-large opes.

Ok...I am going to ask anyway...

What is the real purpose of the ACC tourney...Looks like they will have 5 teams in already...is it just homefield advantage at this point? Unless there are some durprise upsets...seems like we already know who qualifies...

Well, there's a reason they play the games. Funny things can and do happen.

Duke and Clemson are capable of beating all of the Top 5 teams in the ACC. It's doubtful, but they could go on a run and win the at-large bid. That last glimmer of hope is the beauty of conference tournaments.

Other than that, they play for pride, seeding, exposure to scouts - a lot of them come to the ACC Tourney, though not as many as they used to get when they played 5 games in 2 days at the same site - experience and a chance to build momentum heading into the national tournament. And some years, a bubble team can play themselves in or out of the NCAA Tournament with their showing.

Just because it's not relevant this year doesn't mean it never is.

The Wednesday matches (4 games in 1 day) was one of my favorite days of the year. It was special, not so anymore.

Yeah, it wasn't just great soccer but great people watching in terms of MLS and US Soccer types.

You could meet a lot of people of note in the American soccer community.

Now, with no more than 2 games at the same site, you don't get nearly as many scouts at the same time.

Just don't play the ball over the touch line

Maybe it is relevant.... Considering the concern others seem to have for teams being "over .500".. what happens if Clemson WINS the ACC Tournement?

If Clemson wins the Tournament they go to the NCAA's and some other team arooooooound #43 in the final RPI does not go

If Clemson wins the ACC Tournament, they get the automatic bid, regardless of their record. That's why it's called an "automatic" bid.

I don't see much mystery here. Am I missing something?

I guess they get to .500 by winning all 3 games in the tourney.. right now, they are 2 games behind .500

Right -and - is that "fair" and "reasonable"...

I think there's a disconnect here.

If you win the automatic bid, it doesn't matter what you're record is, you get in automatically. Ergo, the automatic bid.

Are you new to college sports?

This is how it's been for decades. In the old days of the NCAA basketball tournament, each conference got one bid and it went to the winner of the conference tournament, regardless of record. (Unless the conference didn't have a tournament, then it went to the regular-season champ.)

Almost every year in March Madness there's some team from some small conference that has a losing record but they got hot in their conference tournament and won their conference's automatic bid.

This happens in soccer, too. I don't think there's much of a controversy here and the only thing noteworthy seems to be your confusion at how the system works, and has worked for decades.

We hereby interrupt this fascinating discussion of automatic bids ...

... Carry on!