2017 D1 Season Thread

Thanks for starting this thread. If I may, I’d like to project which teams have the greatest likelihood to end the season as national champions.

I see a Tier 1 group of 5 teams fighting it out for a 1-seed, and the greatest likelihood to end the season as the last team standing. In alphabetical order: Duke, PSU, Stanford, UNC, & WVU.

I look at PSU as the proverbial team to beat this season. Half of their starters will be seniors, experienced talent from back to front.

“This team has talent and is very experienced, even if they graduated talented seniors. They can score goals, they can hold it down at the back, and face a challenging schedule that will only help their RPI.” The quote describes both WVU and Duke.

UNC add incoming talent to their experienced lineup. A perennial College Cup contender and will be playing the last weekend.

Stanford may actually be a 2-seed due to playing a weak OOC schedule and a weakened Pac. But if their new scorers can consistently take goals, they will go deep this season.

Then there is a Tier 2 group of 4 teams fighting it out for a 2-seed - Georgetown, FSU, ND, & TAMU [or whomever the SEC champ will be],

Georgetown have the experience of going deep in 2016 and will do so again this season. Could challenge for a 1-seed, but as last season, their conference schedule will drag down their RPI.

FSU & ND will earn enough wins in the tough ACC and get a 2-seed.

The SEC champ, whom I project to be TAMU, will get a 2-seed.

Let the season start already

 

I agree with you mostly. But how can you say Stanford has a "weak" ooc schedule? They play a strong Florida, Santa Clara and G'Town (by all accounts all 3 will be top 20). That's not a weak ooc schedule to me.

I do think you need to add UCLA, FSU and UVA to the top tier. Possibly Notre Dame too. They will be very good this year. I still think WVU is overrated, but that's just me.

I am very excited to get this season underway. I went to see NC State exhibition match last night vs High Point. 3-0 NCSU, easy win. But was exciting to finally go watch women's college soccer again.

 

Why would he mention the two teams that can beat Stanford in conference and why would he mention the one that will be favored against them and the other that smashed them last year? Not to mention they play both schools on the road. I think it is because their national title hopes can come crashing down again in October.

 

Are you stating that I over- or under-estimated both ND & TAMU?

USC lost a ton of experienced talent. All 5 of those seniors were drafted to the pros. I think it's difficult to replace the breadth and depth of those contributions.

UCLA have a slew of young attacking talent. Operative word is young. A very young team to contend deep into the 2017 playoffs? 2018, yes.

Virginia are even less experienced than UCLA, and they don't have that kind of scary attacking talent.

Stanford spend 2 weeks away opening the season against 3 teams that will probably not make the dance. What would make it worse is if they don't win all three.

G'town strong yes. Florida will be nowhere close to the heights of where they've been the past 3 seasons. They will struggle to make the dance after losing all that talent.

SCU always play better than their RPI suggests; their number is the result of playing in a weak conference. Do you remember how BYU's RPI last season slid week after week after playing sub-250 teams? SCU are even less experienced than UCLA or Virginia. They'll go deep next year, just like UCLA.

For the purposes of clarity, I define Tier 1 as those teams that have the greatest likelihood of attaining a 1-seed. Tier 2 a 2-seed. I just go by the NCAA logic of post-season selection.

I don't disagree by the NCAA's methodology of seeding and the coefficients. I disagree with how they match teams up. For transparency, they should put 1-seeds in pot 1, 2-seeds in pot 2, and so on, then make a blind draw. Just like they do with UEFA Champions League and Europa Cup. Too much unknown goes on behind closed doors, they should just let randomness do the draw, and would make for good live TV

 

I agree with both posts by Cachundo. His picks are not irrational and what he is also saying is that anything could happen. Both are likely correct

 

What you propose isn't that far from what they do, although in some cases it could be a great distance. Most likely they do put the 1-seeds in pot 1, the 2-seeds in pot-2, and so on. The difference from your suggestion is that they don't make a blind draw. Instead, they tell their "travel cost minimization" program to place teams from the pots into the bracket so as to minimize travel costs.

Contrary to what you said, this is not a "behind closed doors" approach. The NCAA is explicit that is how they do it ... unless someone has done the work to show that isn't how they do it?

 

Somewhere on youtube I remember watching Leone at Harvard, right after the selection thing, and he said they knew they'd get either BC or Rutgers (i think). Kinda anti-climactic and boring, i thought.

Does the NCAA pay the travel costs for the tournament? I thought they did.

 

That's a bad loss, exhibition or not. Purdue is the worst team in the big 10, ND "should" (was?) be one of the top 5 in the ACC. Not good.

 

Upon further inspection....it does look like quite a few potential starters for ND didn't play (Jacobs, M Flores, the Klawunder twins, C Dyke, Muya). That probably made the difference.

 

its preseason... doesn't matter, just checking for player fitness, and can the new kids mix well with the returners...

Besides, ND has bigger things to worry about in ACC play...

 

based on the first exhibition game, it looks like NC State could be the team to beat in the ACC??

 

lol. No. I was at the game. They look good, but High Point is not a good team. NCSU looked like they would score 5-6 goals, and they should have, but it didn't materialize. They possessed the ball 85% of the time it seemed like, but it didn't materialize into great scoring opps.

 

I was half heartily trying to make the point about not jumping to conclusions with pre season games. I do expect NCSU to be mid-upper level of the Acc table this year though...

ACC - 1. FSU 2. UNC 3. Duke 4. - 8. (ND, NCSU, UVA, VT, WF not in any order), the rest - CLEM, BC, Miami, SYR, PITT..

 

Has Clemson fallen? I thought they have been good in past few seasons?

 

lost 9 starters (12 seniors graduated).

 

Clemson had an amazing Senior class of about 10 key players last year! They are now all gone, and the returning players and freshmen class will not make up all that production. So they will inevitably fall in the standings this year. I think they'll be anywhere from 9-12 spot in the ACC.

 

NCSU 0 Wake 0 at half. Bad bad news for NCSU though. Jackie Stengel looks like her career might be over. She went down in like the 3rd min and couldn't walk by herself off the field. Possibly another acl tear. (Hope not but doesn't look good). Also Kia Rankin came out of the game and looks to have a slight knee sprain. That's a lot of attacking weapons lost for State

 

My numbers say WVU over Georgetown and UNC over Duke. But, at this stage in the season, the numbers will be right only 57.4% of the time. The numbers will be within a half of the result an additional 21.9% of the time. So the numbers will be right or within a half 79.2% of the time (Note: rounding produces a slight discrepancy).

Being within a half means this:

If the numbers predict a tie, the game is not a tie.

If the numbers predict a win/loss, the game is a tie.
​

 

Let the games, the season, begin!

 

Where is the most updated scoreboard site?

 

Let the data begin